


Mercy

by BardToThra



Series: Tomes Of The Hunter [2]
Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Blood and Violence, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eating Disorders, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Hunt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kidnapping, Period-Typical Racism, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:02:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 32
Words: 76,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22456171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardToThra/pseuds/BardToThra
Summary: skekMal's Gelfling slave, Leina, has escaped him to the Crystal Sea. Being the first of many captives to do so she becomes his obsession, the focus of a hunt that will end in blood.*SKIP TO CHAPTER 7 FOR SKEKMAL/LEINA CONTENT*The sequel to Lap Dog, I suggest reading that first but it's not mandatory!
Relationships: skekMal (Dark Crystal) & Original Character(s)
Series: Tomes Of The Hunter [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616860
Comments: 185
Kudos: 172





	1. A Devil Afoot

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read Lap Dog already please do!
> 
> But anyway here begins the vast and epic sequel to the darkest of Dark Crystal fics on the web. Enjoy!
> 
> NOTE: skip to Chapter 7 if you want to get straight in to skekMal/Gelfling content*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal reflects on his quarry as he begins the hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, the first chapter of my sequel to Lap Dog! Enjoy

It had only been three days since skekMal had first entered the Crystal Desert, and already his nerves were starting to fray. Rek'yr didn't seem much affected by the scouring winds and sands, leading the Hunter through it with the ease of a dancer. Of course: _he_ knew the sands as well as air, _clearer_ than air, his slim form weightless. skekMal, on the contrary, found the ever-constant roar and buffet of the Crystal Sea maddening, gritting his teeth through every hour of it. It got behind his mask and into his scabbards, into every fold of robe and armour. How he missed the tiny fingers of a slave to cleanse these furrows, the smallest of which he couldn't shake free.

Hunting, however, was good. _More_ than good: it was the best any grounds had offered in many unnum, beasts of great calibre stalking from dune to dune without any sign of the Scientist's taint. skekMal slaughtered two predators in an afternoon, guided by Rek'yr to pockets of unstirred air that allowed him to strike the killing blow unhampered by the elements. It was a shame that skekMal found the terrain so intolerable or else he might have planned to stay longer, hunt til the sands were soaked with crimson. As it was he only expected to remain for a matter of weeks, enough time to find the girl he sought and bring her back to the Endless Forest.

_The girl_. The Grottan.

_Leina_.

Just thinking about his runaway pet set the Hunter's pulse ablaze. He seethed with anticipation of their eventual confrontation, and memories of their past. Their time together, though short, had been intense; while neither stronger nor more intelligent than skekMal's previous captives Leina _had_ been unusually resilient and wily, both admirable traits in prey.

But this wasn't the _only_ reason the Hunter sought her out, nor why he intended to drag her back _alive_. Every other runaway had suffered their throats slit and drunk from like wine flasks- not _she_. Not yet.

There was something _different_ about her, an aberration, a rot. It came whenever he hurt her, and eventually when _she_ hurt him, a black, crazed hatred emerging like steam from a fissure in volcanic rock. It had been so unlike the gentle and forgiving nature of Gelfling-kind, a nature the girl _herself_ had, once upon a time.

But no more. It was as if in trying to break her the Hunter had awoken a living madness, and not _once_ had he seen such a thing before. It wasn't the insanity of a Vapran pet who'd once claimed through a mouthful of blood to love him, or a Sifa that had smashed itself to death on a rock before skekMal could stop it. The closet thing the Hunter could think to compare it to was a Skeksis' own terrible, sudden anger, and while Leina would never achieve the same magnitude of destruction the likeness still intrigued him.

Amused, yes, but also _enraged_. After all, the motive driving his hunt most strongly was the thought of revenge, of _justice_. No living creature before Leina had ever _dared_ tangle the Hunter in his own trap as she had done, nor pricked him so deep the blade scraped bone. She'd stared with those wild, half-mad eyes, eyes that only saw due to a tool skekMal _himself_ had acquired for her- and although he'd done so for his own benefit he _blazed_ at her ungratefulness. At her bald courage and disrespect. 

His punishment would be terrible and delicious; now, at last, skekMal would see if she would _truly_ break, and enjoy the spectacle of her sanity splintering like broken bone. 

There was one final thing that had led the Hunter to prolong the girl's wretched life, one he wouldn't readily admit to another. It was the simple fact that he'd grown to _enjoy_ her company- not in any loving or sentimental sense but carnally, sadistically, entangled in a vice of desire and physical comfort. As much as skekMal liked to believe he was above the base, desperate clinches his brothers squirmed in, the Hunter was moved by many of his own. Lust, pride, cruelty, but _lust_ of all kinds, most of all. 

The Hunter missed forcing the girl's warm holes around him after a hunt, the fierce, ineffectual squirming of her fragile body in his grip. The way her smell alone now made him hard by association, and how she'd bucked and wetted his tongue when he'd made her come. In many ways the Hunter had grown used to Leina, even _preferred_ her- he'd fucked a handful of female Gelfling in the throes of hunting her, but they were wilting ghosts in comparison to his mad Grottan.

She really _had_ become his dog, after all.

These thoughts followed the Hunter from day to night. The nights in particular left themselves wide open for rumination; at sunset Rek'yr would find sheltered caves or cliff sides that allowed them to set up camp, sharing almost a companionable silence until the Brothers rose again. However on the third night the Gelfling seemed of a strange temperament, casting the Hunter long, heavy looks across the fire.

For some time skekMal ignored him, able to feel the sorrow of his judgement. Then after a few hours of this scrutiny the Hunter said, "Talk, then, if you must."

"I was merely wondering, friend, how it is the Gelfling you're hunting entered your service."

"As all Gelfling do," said the Hunter, gruffly. "By nature of _your_ kind's agreement with us to serve without question."

"An agreement I am aware of and myself follow," said Rek'yr, gently. "What I ask is the specific circumstances of the one you call _Leina_."

His expression was one of neutral calm again, carefully smooth and controlled. The Hunter decided to humour him, if only a little. 

"I came upon her in the woods. Sought her as my attendant. She became it. Same as all the Gelfling I've kept by me before."

"I believe you _know_ what I speak of, skekMal," said Rek'yr, a stronger note entering his voice. "Please, do not disrespect me by talking in circles. It is not my place to condemn or criticize you. I only wish to hear your honest account out of my own curiosity."

The Hunter stabbed at the fire with a long stick and released an irritable growl. 

"Fine. I took her by force. It is my right, and I'll stand by that to my last breath. Not that I care what any other creature thinks of my dealings with her."

"To what end did you take her?" Rek'yr enquired. "She doesn't seem much of a hunter."

" _That_ she was not."

Another heavy pause; skekMal could see Rek'yr's ears drooping a little.

"So her suffering was punishment for her failings, then."

"Most. I see you disapprove. You've long known my ways, Sandmaster. Why does my handling the girl as I see fit surprise to you?"

"I've seen you mutilate simple animals many times. But never a _Gelfling_ , a sentient _being_ , one of your own subjects- surely you perceive the difference. And Merce is young, only a few trine into her womanhood-"

" _Merce_."

skekMal stirred the fire so hard the flames spat and jumped like tiny demons.

"It is the name _she_ has chosen," said Rek'yr. "I will respect it as I have her."

"She hasn't _earned_ it. Your respect, or that fucking name. You think she is some innocent? A bleating infant plucked from her mother's nest? Ask yourself, Rek'yr. Why didn't she tell you who her Master was? _Who_ she fled from?"

The Gelfling lowered his head.

"She knew that it was treason to escape you."

"That's not _all_ she did, either. She played members of the Skeksis court against me- my own brothers -and twisted their will to suit her. Lowered herself to filthy means even you'd be rankled by. And I told you her blade entered my chest; I can show you the scar."

The Hunter tugged his armour aside, showing the thick twist of flesh on his upper torso. Reluctantly the Gelfling roved his gaze across it, wincing.

"You'll take her to her demise, then," said Rek'yr. "She will surely be executed for her crimes."

"What does that matter to _you_? Your lot worship death."

" _My_ beliefs are not _her_ beliefs. And I feel that she has much to give in her living state before she rejoins Thra."

The Hunter let out a low roar.

"You mean to _sway_ me? Hark this: any who stands in my path to her will be slain, regardless of how pure their intentions are. But she will live a while yet. She belongs to me, flesh and soul."

"You will spare her?

The near-hopeful tone in Rek'yr's voice was laughable.

"Oh, she'll _die_ , one day," said the Hunter. "But by my hand. When have you ever known me to let another take my prize?"

Paling, Rek'yr got to his feet.

"And where are you off to?" skekMal grunted.

"I desire to be alone for a moment of meditation. It is my custom, on such nights."

"Hmm. Pray for the girl's soul all you want; I've already torn it to pieces."

When the Gelfling had strode away over a sand dune the Hunter found himself fixated on his slave again, her odd little face and parchment-thin body calling to him from the depths of memory. The Hunter slipped his cocks from his breeches and handled himself roughly, recalling the first time he'd taken Leina's cunt, the very last, a dozen moments in between. He wondered if she touched herself guiltily at night over those same couplings before crying herself to sleep.

He ached for her soft, unruly hair between his fingers, her high, guttering cries. The musty salt of tears and blood and come, the blackening of a bruise exploding beneath his fist. The rattle of broken teeth in her mouth, the quiver of wings beating futiley as he fucked her from behind like the bitch she was.

But it was her eyes he thought of as he came, vast, white, near-blind, meeting his. 

"Leina."


	2. Vice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina tries to forget skekMal, but even in her new life he is everywhere...

The smell of meat cooking still reminded Leina of the Hunter.

Throughout her first weeks on board the sand-ship _Talusa_ Leina had taken her meals alone. There was no one to watch her scrape morsels tirelessly around her plate, nobody to judge her as each bite drove her towards tears of shame and conflict. Fr'oudea- the friend who had so kindly taken her in from the Desert -didn't question Leina's need for isolation, nor the fact so many plates brought to their shared cabin were returned almost as full as they'd arrived. 

It was only when Fr'oudea admitted that her family members on board were beginning to take offense at their guest's absences from dining that Leina began to join them, suffering through the smells and sounds of eating as best she could. But it wasn't _only_ meat that was hard to stomach; the Dousan diet included a combination of hardy roots, egg and grains, but even the smallest portion was near impossible to move from fork to mouth. 

"Many apologies if the meal doesn't meet your _expectations_ , Merce," said Tarna, Fr'oudea's mother, from across the table.

Her tone was one of cool politeness, but as she'd made many such comments over the past three unnum Leina had come to identify the barb of passive aggression within. It was the same she'd known in her village, all her young adult life: the price of her difference. It struck her as unfair, for having never lived amongst or even met another member of the Grottan Clan she'd never learned their manners, couldn't say if the barbed rumours of poor hygiene and other eccentric, unappetizing habits were true. The only thing she shared with them was her appearance, though few had ever bothered to learn that for themselves.

Still, rather than rise to Tarna's coldness Leina only responded in kind, her voice neutral, the peak of civility. 

"Oh no, I could thank you a hundred times for this meal, _really_ ," she said. "But as I've said before, I've never had a big appetite."

Beneath the table Fr'oudea squeezed Leina's knee in sympathy, but didn't speak aloud in her defence. They both knew that despite the Dousan's renowned grace and respect it didn't often extend to freely housing members of other clans, particularly to a troubled runaway. Leina was forced to be thankful, and for that reason at all she tried again to eat, but couldn't, no more than a few straining bites.

She glanced anxiously up at Koron, Fr'oudea's father, who as usually blankly avoided her gaze, and her grandfather, Hila'an, who despite being the most vocal member of the table never commented on her quiet struggle, if he even noticed it. He'd been a traveller, once, eighty trine ago, and was always in the middle of some story or another. Leina tried to focus on his words, a tale of a scuffle with Sifa pirates that may or may not have been true, but it was no good. She couldn't swallow, felt like weeping at the idea of clearing her plate, still, _still_ , after all this time.

Excusing herself, Leina stood and fled the room, unable to bear Tarna looking, Koron pointedly _not_ looking, any longer. She clambered many stairs to the top deck where she hung over the side of the ship, forcing her fingers hopelessly in her throat only to spit up strings of bile.

Humiliation rolled over her in hot, shimmering waves. Refusing to eat had begun with the Hunter as an objection, refusing his brutal kills and trying to seize something, _anything_ she could control, something she could truly say that _she_ had decided for herself. But what had started as a choice had become a harrowing vice, shameful, unshakable.

Leina knew this odd, sand-choked world even less than skekMal's, the forests of which at least she was accustomed to, from before. Now amongst strangers who loathed to accept her this grim urge to starve herself was the last familiarity Leina had; as much as she tried _not_ to there was a maniacal triumph in knowing she'd succeeded in punishing herself again.

Dripping with sweat Leina sagged down, silent sobs rippling through her. She had tried, tried, _tried_ to recover, to move on, but the Hunter's influence played her like a hand on a puppet's strings, dangling her this way and that. If it wasn't dreams of his brutalities it was habits she'd learned and couldn't quit, reflexes that overwhelmed her, the unsettling, somehow noisy pit of his absence, echoing without him.

So strictly she'd learned to live by his cruel, violent order that Leina found herself marooned, unable to scramble footing for herself in a second chance at life.

"Are you okay?" Fr'oudea asked, gently, clambering up onto the deck.

Leina flinched. Just those three words with their soft, unconditional caring panicked her, made her feel as if there was a steel trap around her, closing in. She was well aware of the lingering hope and expectation behind Fr'oudea's solemn eyes, not of the physical like skekMal, skekSil, skekEkt, but _romance_ , whatever that promised. Whatever that really _was_.

At any rate Leina couldn't imagine settling here with Fr'ou. She was too ill-suited to her life, a misfit whose jagged, wounded ages forever rubbed against those around her. Nor could Leina stand the thought of belonging to someone again, no matter how benevolent the sense. She didn't want the flutter of Fr'ou's hand at her forever, the heaviness of that lovelorn stare, their names conjoined as one.

"Go back to your family, Fr'ou," said Leina, wiping her eyes. "I just need some air."

"No, you don't," said Fr'oudea. "This happens almost every day. You just get thinner and thinner. You're... you're not well. I want to help you."

She was so stiflingly kind that a strange mixture of misery and anger overwhelmed Leina completely.

"Well, you _can't_. I know you're trying, but you _can't_. I'm not _going_ to get better. Nothing is going to change. I just want to be on my own, _please_ , Fr'ou."

"You can't say that, Leina. Nothing remains the same forever, you know that, not even pain, not even death-"

She was moving across the deck, her arms outstretched, meaning to hold Leina. Images surfaced, skekEkt's painted, beckoning talons, skekSil's false comfort, skekMal crushing her to his harsness at night, brutal, unstoppable, tearing the sweetness of any embrace into poisoned shards. Leina scrambled back, her breath caught in a jagged, panicked rasp.

"Fuck _off_ , Fr'ou, just fuck _off_ , why don't you _listen_? Don't come near me, just go _away_ , please go _away_."

Fr'oudea immediately halted, and her expression was one of such betrayed sadness that Leina found herself screaming again, unable to stop it, unable to control her misplaced, twisting pain.

"Fuck OFF! Stop LOOKING at me!"

With quiet restraint Fr'oudea turned and headed back below deck again, only the quiver of her wings giving away the true extent of her hurt. Leina curled up into a ball, hating herself, all she'd become. It was agony to think that she'd attacked such a pure and adoring friend, but perhaps that was better than getting any closer, letting herself be loved, trawling her into her infected darkness. 

Leina wondered not for the first time if she should have _stayed_ with the Hunter, remained his creature until the end of her days. How many trine would he have kept her as his bedfellow, rutting her, beating her at his leisure? The Hunter had seemed in no rush to kill her; he could have let her die after her beating in the castle, but hadn't, going to lengths to preserve her life. He'd even begun taking her into an odd kind of confidence when the nights were quiet- perhaps only as he might have muttered to himself, had he been alone, or a pet Fizzgig, had he kept one.

But it was still an acknowledgment that she was another being who could listen to his thoughts, and exchange her own.

It was little to cling to, but in a dreadful, contorted manner it was comforting to recall those routines, predictable as they'd become. That frightened her more than anything; Leina couldn't stand the thought of some stupid, grovelling spirit in her wanting that bleak life again. She couldn't give into it. _Wouldn't_.

If Leina had to be angry at something then make it _that_ thought, not her friend. Not _herself_.

*

Later, when she was sure that Fr'oudea's kin had returned to their separate chambers, Leina crept down to her own cabin and slipped through the door, her head bowed. Fr'oudea sat on a chair by the porthole, reading a book and chewing fretfully at a loose fingernail. When she saw Leina enter she stood up instantly, clapping the book closed.

"I'm sorry," said Leina. "I shouldn't have shouted at you. It's just... it's been so long and I still feel the same as when I ran away. But it's not your fault."

Nodding, Fr'oudea said, "I know. It's okay."

"No, it's _not_ ," said Leina. "I was horrible to you."

She crossed to Fr'oudea and seized hold of her right hand, causing the book to tumble onto the chair.

"You can hit me if you like. I deserve it."

Fr'oudea exploded into nervous laughter.

"I mean it," said Leina. "I used to let my little brother hit me when I was nasty to him. Now it's your turn. Go on."

Still giggling, Fr'oudea tried to tug her hand away, but Leina yanked her back, drawing her warm palm to her tear-stained cheek. 

"Go on. Go on. Do it, do it, do it."

At last Fr'oudea gave in, tapping Leina lightly, experimentally, the blow thrown off by her laughter.

"No," said Leina. "Harder."

For the second time Fr'oudea slapped her, this time surprising them both with a stinging blow. There was a still, frozen silence between them until Leina said, breathlessly, "Again."

There came a third blow, a fourth, each increasingly harder, more passionate, until Leina stumbled back and they fell to the floor together, the blows becoming one with a fierce, wordless embrace. For all her striking Fr'oudea was still too fucking _soft_ , too soft to scour skekMal from her. She felt _his_ talons in her cunt as Fr'ou's fingers scratched at her, his tearing cocks where she had none, his hateful, snarling voice between her feathery moans. Only at the end when they both clamped together, wheezing, worn out, did Leina forget him, too tired to think of much at all.


	3. The Girl From Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rek'yr draws skekMal into talking of his previous prey, and Leina is granted a favour

skekMal was in the middle of gutting a kill when Rek'yr's head jolted up, his eyes narrowed at the horizon.

"A sandstorm is coming," he said, gravely.

With a snort the Hunter cast a handful of steaming entrails into the sand. 

"When is there _not_ in this blasted place?"

"This one is different. It will impact our journey. Even I cannot face a storm so fearsome. We must take shelter and wait for it to pass."

"Hmph," said skekMal, snapping his prey's ribcage apart. "How long will that take?"

"Days. Perhaps a week."

The Hunter jerked violently, sending a spray of blood across the sand from the gut of his quarry. 

"You _jest_ , Sandmaster."

The Gelfling frowned, drawing himself upright.

"I do not. I promised that I would take you to Merce, and I will keep that oath. I would not delay the course of fate unjustly, no matter what my personal feelings are on the matter."

"I doubt that. You would let her slip through my grasp in an eye's blink, crime though that might be."

Rek'yr didn't immediately reply. The Hunter knew their cautious friendship was being strained to its edges by their clash of morals, but he felt no guilt or sorrow in it. Although skekMal had always grudgingly respected Rek'yr for skills the Gelfling wielded that he did not there was no liking or affection beyond that. He suspected that Rek'yr's opinion of him was much the same.

"What is it about _this_ girl that so compels you?" said Rek'yr, his mellow voice suddenly sharp. "In the many trine I've known you I have never witnessed you invest such fervour into a hunt. Having heard her crimes I wonder if there is _more_ than merely a thirst for justice in you." 

skekMal only growled, concentrating on stripping flesh from bone in thick, clotted strands.

"Is she the first of your attendants to escape you?" Rek'yr pushed.

"Are you trying to goad me?" snapped the Hunter.

"No," said Rek'yr, quietly. "Merely understand you."

skekMal grinned. The dual arrogance and naivety of Gelflings never failed to amuse him; the Sandmaster with his insipid empathy would never comprehend the adrenaline rush of chasing down difficult prey, nor the triumph of closing in.

"If you want talk wait til I'm not buried to the shoulder in offal," said the Hunter, plucking the heart from its cage of broken bone. "I'll answer your fickle queries all you wish. But I doubt that you have the stomach to hear any tale of my past in full."

He hoped the Gelfling would forget, but later, when they were both hunkered in a cave, hiding from the storm that scoured the earth outside, Rek'yr asked the question again. He was quite undaunted by skekMal's warning, it seemed. 

"Only one other before Leina escaped me," said the Hunter. "Over two hundred trine ago. But she did not get far. I have not thought of her in some time."

"Another attendant who was unwilling in their service, I take it?" said Rek'yr, his ears so low against his head that they were almost flat. 

"Very."

skekMal let the word hang, enjoying the ripple of disgust crossing Rek'yr's face.

"I plucked her from the Sifa coast on one of my few hunts there. There's little there worth taking, nothing but fish and seabirds from one end to the other. What luck I had when I found a small girl picking shells from the sand."

"And you picked her, in kind."

"Yes. A better find than any conch, that."

The Hunter leaned back against the cool wall of the cave, relishing the memory. Salt wind and the screaming of gulls, the crunch of sand and pebbles underfoot as he crept under the cover of sea mist towards a little figure crouched by lapping foam, red curls escaping from an earth-coloured cap. Her dress had been creeping up the back of her calves, exposing freckled brown skin, tiny ankles.

He remembered how she'd yelped when he seized one to pull her under him, how he'd tasted saltwater as he licked her cheek, fucking her face-down on the sand. The tightness of her cunt broken in by his cocks, all three filling her one after the other, finishing amidst the din of the girl's choking screams. She'd coughed grains of sand up as the Hunter slung her over his shoulder afterwards, her nose streaming- perhaps that was how _Leina_ would look, when he caught her. 

"Her name was Velyn," said skekMal. "If you want to remember her in your mutterings to Thra."

"She no longer lives, then."

There was a glimmer of horror in Rek'yr's eyes, and although he didn't physically move skekMal sensed him recoiling a little.

"Even after she tried to flee me I kept her, for a time; she was useful to me, being versed in spells and such like that made me prosper in the hunt. But she did not last. She was weak, homesick. And I was hard on her."

The Hunter thought of his blade, rending the wings from Velyn's back in scooping swipes, leaving gouges that never quite healed. He thought of the warm blood on his hands, on his mouth, on her cunt as he used it to fuck her, punishment for slipping through his fingers, if only briefly. How she had wept and screamed for days over the loss, her spirit as crippled as her bodily form. If the Hunter was to take Leina's flight from her he'd have to be cautious about it, break them only temporarily, perhaps. 

"If she was so _weak_ how did she escape you?" asked Rek'yr. "Your speed, strength and ferocity are unmatched in this land. No Gelfling could best you, and yet, twice now-"

"Some magic," growled the Hunter. "I was hunting a pack of Rakkidas, five of them, fully grown. The Sifa girl cast a spell that allowed her to slip by me unseen while I dispatched them; she would have fled to the Swamp of Sog, if I had not caught her. She did not make it beyond the Endless Forest."

For some time there was only the sound of the wind howling outside of the cave, the steady drip of blood from the Hunter's kill hanging, waiting to be eaten. 

"And then, so many trine later, there was Merce," said Rek'yr. "Or _Leina_ , as she is known to you." 

Even the name made the Hunter seethe with lust and anger. He would never tell a living soul that he had been at the grog when the girl escaped him, would never admit how comfortable he'd been in the midst of his own arrogance. When Leina was in his grasp again he'd force a flask of the stuff down her throat until she swooned, ruin every hole while she lay doused and unable to resist him.

"The girl was a trickster," skekMal growled. "Just like her predecessor. She could _never_ have bested me outright. And will not."

"I never would have believed you would make _my_ kind your sport," Rek'yr murmured. "Foolish of me, perhaps, but I believed that you had more honour than that."

Leering, the Hunter rounded on the Sandmaster.

"Honour. _Ha! I_ have more than either of those conniving beasts. From birth the Gelfling serve us, and do so to the grave. To be my prey is another kind of service, is it not?"

"The more you speak the more I doubt your kinship with our race. What you describe is not service. That is victimhood."

"Oh, Rek'yr. You speak so _boldly_ to me and yet you do not even know the half of it."

For a moment skekMal was tempted to gloat of his conquests, purely to see the devastation cross the Gelfling's face. But instead he only turned away, keeping his cruel thoughts to himself. 

*

Leina lay in Fr'oudea's arms on the cabin floor, eyes closed, trying to relax into the girl's yielding softness, the fresh smell of her hair. Then, in the silence, Fr'oudea spoke.

"What happened to your brother?"

Wriggling out of Fr'oudea's grasp Leina stared at her, suddenly cold with shock.

" _What_? What are you talking about?"

"You mentioned you had a brother, earlier. You said you used to let him hit you. And... you dream about him, sometimes. I was wondering... where he is now."

Sickness rolled through Leina's stomach like an icy wave. She had told herself that she would give nothing of her old life away, yet here she was, forgetting herself, letting pieces of it slip through the cracks.

"He's gone. Dead."

"Oh Merce, I'm so sorry, I didn't know."

Fr'oudea reached out, meaning to touch Leina as she so often did, then pulled back as if she'd been burned. A pang of guilt struck Leina, and in a rush she said, "His name was Tarron. The Animal killed him. For pleasure. He was my best friend, and he was taken away as if he'd never existed."

" _Thra_. That's so terrible. I... don't know what to say."

"It's alright. You don't have to say anything. But do you understand now _why_ I want to learn how to defend myself? I don't want to be a killer, or to disrupt your people's peace. I just want to stop the Animal slaughtering me like he did Tarron. You have no idea how dangerous he really is."

Leina saw Fr'oudea twitch, as if a tight spasm of pain had passed through her. 

"Please," said Leina. " _Please_ , please, if there's someone who can help me learn, even a little, you have to tell me. I don't want to feel defenceless."

"Alright," said Fr'oudea, abruptly. "I know a little for fending off wild beasts, but not much. But my grandfather is the only person I know who's ever been in real combat; you've heard his stories about pirates and thieves and all sorts. He might be willing to instruct you, if you ask him. He'll probably be flattered. But _please_ don't breathe a word around my parents. You know how they are."

A smile broke out across Leina's face, sudden and irrepressible. It felt odd to smile after so long, even unnatural. It almost hurt.

"Thank you," she breathed. "I wish I could tell you how important this is to me. It might save my life, one day."

Fr'oudea didn't return the smile, only worried at her lip with her teeth.


	4. Conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fr'oudea contemplates whether she made the right decision in helping Leina/Merce learn self defense, and Leina struggles with memories of the past

For the first night since she'd stepped foot on the _Talusa_ Merce appeared to sleep without dreams, or bad ones, at least. Still Fr'oudea lay awake, staring at the girl, her face strangely naked without her glasses. It seemed younger, vulnerable in a way that, waking, Merce simply wasn't, even amidst tears. 

It was beginning to occur to Fr'oudea that agreeing to help Merce learn combat from her Grandfather might not have been the best choice. This creature- 'the Animal', slaughterer of children - _surely_ couldn't be beaten by a tiny, part-blind youngling; it was no more than desperation, a pointless struggle against the inevitable.

Fr'oudea frequently asked Merce why she didn't just flee across Thra, try to outrun or at least keep a step ahead of her persuer, but Merce would only bark out a bitter, cynical little laugh and shake her head. Still, Fr'ou was tempted to ask her once more, this time offering herself as a guide, companion.

Her _defender._

After all, Fr'oudea was far taller and stronger than Merce, fit from a life of travelling the harsh Crystal Sea. She knew enough tricks to ward away desert predators and, thus, keep this _Animal_ at a distance. But Fr'ou _hadn't_ asked again, mostly because she knew that if she did it would be for the wrong reasons. Reasons that would drive Merce even further away.

No; Fr'ou would have to watch Merce train herself for this fickle battle, close-lipped, uncomplaining, knowing that at least she'd have _some_ fleeting hope of survival. Even thinking about it brought a shuddering wave of guilt up over Fr'ou, the guilt of betraying her beliefs. But this was far from the first time she had come upon such conflict; as a young girl she'd wanted nothing more than be employed as a guard or handmaiden at the Castle of the Crystal, crying for days when she learned that it would never be.

The Lords, Immortal beings, could not abide the Dousan's acceptance of death, and as much love and respect Fr'ou had for her family and their little world she grappled with and questioned it often. Now that anxiety was only growing, consuming her like a ravenous disease. Not _only_ because the teaching of violence went against Dousan customs, but because without them there might have been the possibility of seeking aid from the Skeksis, who had graciously helped the Gelfling in times of great need.

There was only _one_ Lord that Fr'ou had ever seen set foot in the desert, stalking from afar in Rek'yr's company. Afterwards Rek'yr had told her in sombre tones that he had been skekMal the Hunter, the fiercest of all the Lords. Yet even _he_ disdained the Dousan's teachings, only tolerating them in order to undergo long hunts across the Crystal Sea. Still, perhaps of all of his brethren skekMal would be most sympathetic to Merce's cause, agreeing to pursue the Animal as he would any other beast. 

If _only_ Merce would explain who or what her enemy was. It was becoming more and more evident that the Animal was no dumb beast, being a creature that thought, _schemed_ , and had held Merce as his prisoner. Fr'oudea often wondered if he was a lover turned sour, and that was why Merce was so reluctant to speak of him. Jealousy courted that thought, a sickly, clawing feeling she was afraid of.

But there was something pressing at the back of her mind, a doubt, a _whispering_ that there was something more sinister at play. Something about the rages that came upon Merce at the smallest thing, the darkness stirring in her milky eyes. The way she kept herself emotionally at arm's length even when they fucked, embraced, as if on the inside she was forever far away.

The longer Fr'ou stared at Merce's unreadable, sleeping expression the more the she wondered about all that the Grottan girl had left untold. The unstirred depths of those secrets.

Wondered, and feared them.

*

Leina stood waiting outside the door to Hila'an's cabin, waiting for Fr'oudea to emerge. She'd gone ahead that morning to seek her grandfather's audience in private, no doubt pushing him to cast aside any lingering prejudice in order to help their guest. The notion that Fr'ou might emerge, shaking her head, made Leina fidget with anxiety. She tried not the think at all, but as much as she tried to plunge her thoughts into blackness the more impossible it became.

Leina knew that it was only a matter of time before skekMal came after her. Whatever had slowed him in his hunt would lose its hold over him, sooner or later, and he would come, swords un-sheathed, to claim her. In her time with him Leina had never known the Hunter to spend more than a few weeks stalking even the most elusive quarry, even when wounded; perhaps these months of waiting were prolonged by his _own_ choice, aiming to lull her into a sense of security.

At last the cabin door opened, jolting Leina from her restless thoughts. Smiling, Fr'oudea beckoned her inside. Hila'an was sat up in bed, sipping a cup of water through his greying moustache. He was almost as scarred as Leina, his cheek twisted with a pale, gnarled whiteness, his aged fingers scattered with old wounds. But his eyes, gazing into Leina's, were sharper and clearer than her own had ever been.

"My granddaughter says you want to learn how to defend yourself," he said, bluntly, avoiding any of the usual Dousan greetings or niceties. "I have to tell you, I'm neither warrior nor paladin; what I know I learned from travel companions many trine ago, most of it rough and dirty. Besides, I did a lot more running away than fighting; I'd stick to that, where you can."

"I've tried that," said Leina. "It never works, for long."

"Well, if you're set on it, then," the old man said, shrugging. "But my joints don't work like they used to, so I can't _show_ you, only direct. Is that acceptable, Grottan?"

"Yes, sir," said Leina, bobbing her head. "A thousand thanks for accepting. I know your family don't approve, and I don't want to cause any arguments..."

"Forget all that," said Hila'an, waving a hand. "As I understand it you've come from a bad situation and hope to remain out of it. That's a noble enough reason to pick up the sword as far as I'm concerned- not that I _myself_ was particularly noble, as a youngling."

The old man wheezed out a laugh, but Leina only nodded, aware of Fr'oudea's eyes upon her.

"Now, I understand you might not find this part so agreeable," said Hila'an. "But I need to hear at least a vague description of this character so I can best advise you of how to fight the scoundrel."

Swallowing, Leina said, "I... I will try."

She looked down at her hands, which were flexing of their own accord. It was difficult to know how to begin without giving the truth of her situation away, without giving _herself_ away. How they would hate her, all of them, if they knew they'd been harbouring a fugitive, that she had _lied._ That she'd made herself the criminal the Hunter had forced her to become.

"Well, to begin, how _big_ is he?" prompted Hila'an. "You're as slight as a Unamoth; if he's got a lot of height and weight on you you'll want to think about defense, not attack. Guarding the head, dodging strikes. I can't make a shieldmaiden out of you, girl."

Leina breathed out, long and hard. Then she said, "He... he is over three times the height of even the tallest Gelfling. And stronger than any beast I've ever seen in the Endless Forest."

She paused, rocking on her heels. Even that simple description brought memories coursing back to her, images and smells and terrors she'd tried fiercely to cram deep inside herself.

_His hands at her throat, pinning her against a tree, against the ground, throttling her as easily as a Fizzgig pup, all four arms seizing her, pulling her limbs apart as he entered her body, one hole then another, his talons rending her skin like parchment, his tongue rasping her skin, tasting of flesh, tasting of herself, his blades cutting into her scalp, her ear, singing through the flesh with a silvery voice she seemed to hear in a fog of pain, heard as clear as the voice snarling its climax into her sweat and gore-clotted scalp..._

"Merce," said Fr'oudea, nudging Leina gently. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," said Leina, faintly. "I'll be alright, I just... don't like to remember."

Hila'an was watching her as closely as his granddaughter, but with as much interest than concern.

"A fearsome opponent, then," he said. "And what weapons does he carry? I can make suggestions as to what you should use to counteract or at least keep them from making contact. I favoured a spear, myself."

"Four swords," Leina whispered. "And I've seen him use darts, traps. He..."

Again images came, more and more.

_Running through the rain and trees as he chased her, threatening to rape her and kill her, throw her to wild animals, crouching in the shadows as the click of swords removed her brother's head, falling on hands and knees as he beat her with firewood, pulling her by a rope at her throat through grass, burning her knees with the friction, putting a blade to her cheek as he forced a cock into her aching cunt and crooned that she was pretty, pretty, pretty..._

"A spear, then, and a shield perhaps," said Hila'an, thoughtfully. "Traps too, since _he's_ so fond of them. I will teach what I know, if you're willing. But if you even _think_ he has found you I suggest you flee, little one, take to your wings and leave this place. With your size, your sight... you can only fend such a creature off for a time."

"I understand," Leina whispered. "That's enough. Please, tell me how to fight."

Despite the horrors flitting behind her eyes she made herself listen, braced for the first of many lessons she would take. Hungering for even the breath of a chance.


	5. Crescendo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter begins to close in on Leina, whose training in self defense has given her a new found confidence. Fr'oudea is slowly being driven away...

At last the great storm was ending. 

skekMal had spent the many hours of confinement pacing the cave, sharpening his blades, and inwardly raging over the many days of potential hunting that had slipped him by. True, he had the luxury of immortality to enjoy it- to enjoy _her_ , the girl, the betrayer -but it was less the lost time _itself_ that angered him and more the thought of how Leina might be spending it without him. 

The Sandmaster had told skekMal only a little of her current circumstances- _too_ little, clearly begrudging him even the slightest information. At first it hadn't seemed to matter; skekMal, of course, had never cared much about the purile lives or identities of Gelfling. But in the vacuous boredom of the cave the Hunter had been restless enough to wonder, fixate, turn to anger over the possibilities of _who_ exactly had taken Leina into their fold. It was the same petty outrage he'd felt towards skekSil and skekEkt, like a dragon snatched of its treasured gold. 

"An hour or so and we shall be on the move again," said Rek'yr, softly, from his corner of the cave.

skekMal grunted and drew a thumb across his right-hand sword to test its edge. A line of blood crossed the base of the digit, like a weeping eye. He sucked it clean, the tang rousing that cantankerous old need to maim, posses, kill. 

"The storm will have worked in your favour, you know," Rek'yr commented. "Sandships anchor in shielded areas during harsh weather. The _Talusa_ will not have travelled far; it should be easier to find now than if the winds had stayed low."

"The _Talusa_ ," skekMal repeated, sneering. "So it has a _name_ , this vessel. The girl has remained onboard all these unnum, then? The same ship?"

"She has had no reason to leave it. As I understand it she has been... content."

"Aye, the little liar, spinning tales to endear herself to your people. They do not know it is _I_ who hunts her, or else she'd have been cast out into the sands long ago. Who resides there with her? How many of them?"

For a moment it seemed the Sandmaster would not answer. Then he raised his head, meeting skekMal's eyes reluctantly. 

"Merce is living with a girl named Fr'oudea," said Rek'yr. "Her parents, Koron and Tarna, are very traditional people, but kind-hearted. You are quite right in what you say; they would endure much chagrin if they were aware that Merce sought refuge from your service. Koron's father, Hila'an... well, his feelings on the matter are enigmatic."

"And the Dousan girl? What of her?"

Again Rek'yr seemed to weigh his answer carefully.

"She... she is a loyal follower of the Skeksis. She has often asked me questions about your brethren, about _you_ ; much like her mother and father she would never betray you willingly. As things stand she is ignorant of Merce's true nature."

It was what skekMal had expected, but hearing it aloud ignited ideas he hadn't considered, before. Potential for further torture, and enjoyment.

"It seems a pity that Merce's friendship with Fr'oudea is to be disrupted," Rek'yr continued. "Over the past few unnum I have seen them develop a true connection to each other, grow close."

_Close_. skekMal bridled, keen to the implications of the word. He had guessed as much: Leina had sold her body to skekEkt, after all, who was one of the few amongst his brethren that was female. It would be no difficulty for Leina to give her flesh to the Dousan in exchange for trust, or in a desperate attempt to scour skekMal's ownership from her. But perhaps there was more to it than that. skekMal recalled Leina's affinity for sweet scents and pretty things a plain forest girl had no right to; there was plenty to be found of that in women, was there not?

So she was a pleasure seeker, then. He'd teach her that she could have no joy but that which he gave by tongue or cock, and perhaps even starve her of that. There was a captive that the Hunter had maimed once so that she could take no pleasure, but he'd missed the sickened shivering of her climax, the haunted misery of the aftermath. Leina could keep her little cunt intact, but for _his_ uses alone.

"How sweet," the Hunter said. "That she would lie to a lover's face, too."

"I do not believe that what they share together is any insult to you," said Rek'yr. "I pray that you consider a degree of kindness towards them- carry out what sentence you must, but _please_ , do not wreak destruction where there is no need for it."

"You've no right to ask that of me," snarled the Hunter. "I will act as I see fit. And if your _friend's_ blood paints my hands then that is _her_ doing as much as mine."

"skekMal," said Rek'yr. "You recall the oath you made to me when I agreed to guide you across these sands."

"I recall _no_ such oath," said the Hunter. "And if you asked one of me I did not hear it. I don't speak in thoughts and whispers as your kind do."

skekMal rose to his feet, respecting that the Sandmaster didn't even flinch as his vast height towered over him. 

"What _is_ it you want, Rek'yr? I haven't been blind to your hints and questioning. You slither and squirm around your meaning like a sand snake, yet expect me to cleave to your desires without stating them outright."

"I had hoped that our companionship might revive some of your affection for my race. I recall it, from your youth. There was dignity in you, then, grace and decorum unmatched. That has changed, slowly, as the wind grinds down the face of a stone. The skekMal of old would abandon this hunt in lieu of more noble pursuits."

Grinning, the Hunter touched his blade again, turning it in the dying firefight. 

"You reminisce for a time long gone, Rek'yr. Before I knew the taste of another's knowing despair, sweeter than the fear of beasts. Only a fool would abandon it."

"No," said Rek'yr, coldly. "Any creature close to Thra would find it within them to relent. But you have _forgotten_ Thra, and the plenty it has given you.'

"Not forgotten," said the Hunter, throwing a mocking bow. "I _thank_ it."

Shaking his head Rek'yr turned away. They didn't speak again until the storm dropped and they left for the last stretch of their journey.

*

For two hours a day Leina trained under Hila'an's surveillance, using the shaft end of a spear to practice defense and combat techniques. At first she dodged and ducked against thin air, envisioning the Hunter's bulk filling the empty space. She would work herself into a sweat blocking and thrusting between imaginary blows, building on the motions she'd already been practicing alone as the old man shouted criticisms and encouragement from the sidelines.

"Get in close, then back _up_! If you must attack then always think about how you will retreat; this is about defense, not making a kill!"

"Head and neck down! You want to be small and compact; do _not_ give him a target!"

"Onto the backfoot, good, now take wing- a good option is to throw sand up into the opponent's eyes and run, always worked for me, back in the day."

It was difficult and stressful work, for every second Leina could see the Hunter advancing upon her, four arms braced with shining blades to take her, his wicked eyes gleaming, so clearly he might as well have been in the cabin with her. Clearer than she'd ever truly seen him, even with her eyeglasses.

Recalling the frightening quickness of him was enough to throw Leina off kilter. There were times that she couldn't see for tears streaming down her face and fought blind, times she'd lose her footing and trip on her face, a position that, in her imagined fight, allowed skekMal to take her. Although she could tell that she was making progress, her stamina and confidence building, it was sometimes not enough.

On the fourth day her mind's inner creation of the Hunter's taunts was too loud to ignore and she fell against the cabin wall, breath howling in her lungs, caught on some barb that kept it trapped low and shallow and painful. It escaped her in jumping gasps, and Leina tore at her hair in despair as the voice snarled and hissed inside her skull.

_"You cannot escape me, little whore, little blindling. I will cut you from the sky and remind you who owns your useless corpse."_

"Here, now, girl. Calm yourself."

Hila'an was rising from his bed, using a staff to pull himself slowly upright. Grunting he crossed the room and stood beside Leina without trying to touch her or enter her personal space.

"I will not ask what you're running from," he said. "Nor who. But when I was a boy I fled to the ocean in fear my life would end without me seeing the world or anything beyond the life my culture had decided for me. The more I felt that life pressing behind me, its breath on my neck, the further I sailed, the less I cared for my own morals. Eventually it found me and I returned to my people, but not until I achieved what I had strived for- to gain experience no other I knew had done. Ask yourself girl- whether or not the thing that chases finds you again, have you achieved _something_ you strived for?"

Leina considered, her forehead still pressed against the wall. She had told herself she'd escape the Hunter, survive him, live a life beyond him, and she had done it, was living it even now. 

"Yes," she said, softly.

"Then that is enough," said Hila'an. "Don't destroy your progress by overthinking; there is much more to learn."

By the end of the first week Hila'an encouraged Leina to take up a shield kept from his adventuring days, and the weight of it on her arm was comforting. Fr'oudea, who had spent the week guarding the cabin door to avoid her parents discovering proceedings, was coaxed into becoming Leina's sparring partner. At first she was stiff and uncomfortable, glancing towards the door repeatedly even as she met Leina's spear. Then by the second weak she began to relax, her tall, sloping figure moving with ease into combat.

A sandstorm had taken up outside the ship, meaning that being anchored and imprisoned within they had more hours to spend practicing together without attracting suspicion. They were starting to enjoy the sessions, all three of them, laughing as again and again Fr'oudea darted at Leina before being pushed back by the tip of her spear. Fr'oudea smiled and laughed openly, her eyes dancing over Leina as they clashed. It made Leina feel guilty, for she saw the adoration behind that gaze, pure and raw.

She regretted then what was between them, that had sprung up in one of the first few days upon the _Talusa_. They had been tentative friends, then, speaking together in their shared cabin of simple, girlish things, all of which had seemed almost hilarious to Leina, having been forced so quickly to outgrow them.

"What do you dream of?" Fr'oudea has asked. "Marriage? To be known amongst your clan for a skill? I'm undecided; there are just so many things I want, some of them all at the same time."

"I wish I could dream like _you_ do," Leina had said, in a brittle little voice. "Because all I want is to be _normal_. I never have been, even before... even before..."

Fr'oudea had reached for her, in the dark, and embraced her; it had been the simple comfort of a friend, but Leina, panicking, had spoiled it, pressing her lips Fr'ou's mouth long and hard. They'd lain still a moment, shaking, then Fr'oudea brought her hand to Leina's breast and it was done, their innocent kinship dashed to pieces. Now Leina was left craving a way to undo her foolish act, but it was forever between them, becoming stronger by the day.

Leina tried to ignore it, forcing her mind into the consuming world of combat and escape. Outside of sparring she worked on improving her flight, or merely recalling the steps and techniques she'd been taught in a long list that left no room for other worries. At meals she was able to eat a great deal more, lacking the energy to focus on food or to control it. Tarna, apparently touched by the renewed effort, began to smile and include Leina in conversation. Even Koron, reserved as he was, seemed to warm to her, and if Leina hadn't known what they believed she was to their daughter she might have embraced the change.

By the end of the second week Leina was physically and emotionally wrung out, hovering between elation at her gathering confidence and her growing discomfort with Fr'oudea. She made an excuse to retire to their cabin after sparring, intending to sit for a while and gather her thoughts, but of course Fr'ou follow, and at last Leina felt compelled to speak.

"Fr'ou, this was never meant to be forever," she said, after the girl tried to draw her into a kiss. "Staying here with you, I mean. I should have left an unnum ago but I wasn't... ready. I need to go soon, put more distance between myself and the Animal, wherever he is. It'll give me a better chance, and your family, too. It's the right thing to do."

"No, it's _not_ ," said Fr'oudea. "And it'll be so much harder alone. Besides, you're _happy_ here. I can tell."

"I don't belong with your people," said Leina, sadly. "As kind as you've all been. And I need... to be on my own."

"Then I'll come with you," Fr'oudea insisted.

Leina shook her head.

"You have absolutely _no_ idea how dangerous the Animal is. Sometimes it's like you think this is a game, like the only thing stopping us running away on some romantic adventure is me. You just don't _get_ it."

"Because you won't _let_ me!" cried Fr'ou, her gentle face flushing. "Almost every day we sleep together, and still you're a stranger. You don't ever plan to let me in, do you?"

Leina was about to say no outright, but the way the girl's voice broke made her pause.

"Come here. Dreamfast with me. I'll show you some of what happened."

Trembling, Fr'oudea reached across, arms outstretched. Touching her palms to the girl's Leina sifted through her memories, showing only those where her blindness obscured parts of the scene, or where her back was turned to the Hunter. 

_Lying on her side in a dark tent as skekMal grunted at her neck and thrust inside her, blood gushing under her on skekEkt's table as the Hunter's blade sawed at her ear, her scalp, his body mounting her from behind in the quiet forest, crushing her, forcing her to climax around him, her hands gripping a blade, plunging deep into a Fizzgig's heart, parting the muscle_...

Staggering away Fr'oudea clenched her hands into fists, quaking with a mix of shock, anger and disappointment.

"You still won't show me this monster's face... why won't you tell me who he is? Can't you trust me? Let me help you."

"I can't," said Leina. "I'm so sorry. I never will."

Fr'ou gazed at her for a moment, a tear tracking its way down her cheek, and left the room, her wings twitching at her back.

* 

So it was as Fr'oudea had thought: Merce didn't return her feelings, after all. Never would, never would, no matter what she did, how much love she gave.

She ran through the corridors of the ship, trying to find some unoccupied room to sit and brood. Although Fr'oudea and her family had taken Merce in without expectation her leaving so abruptly felt like abandonment, like rejection. No, it _was_ rejection, and Fr'ou would be lying if she ever said she hadn't expected it. She had felt Merce pulling away even as they clung together, seen the uncomfortable looks the girl cast at her when she thought Fr'oudea wasn't paying attention. Merce owed her nothing, but it still stung to be so pushed away. _Discarded_ , as if she was a summer fancy to be forgotten when the winter came.

Fr'ou knew that she was being selfish- she'd seen a glimpse of the horrors in Merce's mind, the filthy rapes, the brutality of the creature scarring her ear -but she couldn't seem to help herself. There was no accepting how deeply Merce was still entrenched in that past; perhaps if Fr'ou had seen it sooner things would be different, but now there were too many thoughts and feelings at play.

The kitchen was empty; Fr'oudea shut herself in and poured herself a cup of water, sipping slowly in an effort to calm down. As she stood there she noticed that the porthole by the sink had been left open to let air in, sand blowing through with it. Reaching to close it Fr'oudea gasped and pulled back. A tiny creature with catfish whiskers and a long, black and white tail was flying just outside the glass, its tiny paws scrabbling for purchase on the frame.

"A Swoothu? Come in, little one. Take shelter."

The Swoothu eagerly obeyed, landing lightly on the draining board. Fr'oudea had been present when her parents had received messages from these creatures; the Gelfling clans employed them as couriers, ferrying messages that had been dream etched onto various objects. This was the first time Fr'ou had ever encountered one alone, and she felt almost flustered by it.

"Do you have a message for me, Swoothu?" she asked, awkwardly.

The Swoothu looked at her and shook its head.

" _Who_ , then? My mother and father? My grandfather? Or... we have a Grottan guest, staying with us. Perhaps she-"

At this the Swoothu began nodding emphatically. Drawing a shuddering breath Fr'oudea considered the options. If Merce was as alone in the world as she claimed that it was unlikely anyone in her old life knew where she was to send such a message. That left only Rek'yr, who would have no reason to address the girl unless he'd somehow gotten wind of her persuer, or at least someone she suspected might be him.

Either way she was going to lose Merce. She had to know whether it would be sooner or later.

"My friend is resting. Let me read the message. I can pass it on for you. I am a friend to the person who sent it, too; he won't mind."

After a second's thought the Swoothu opened a little satchel kept on its back and presented it to Fr'ou. She opened it quickly, hands shaking, to find a patterned pebble inside, worn smooth by the desert sands. Closing her eyes she pressed her fingertips to it and at once images and voices came rushing towards her, unstoppable, terrible.

_"Merce,"_ said Rek'yr, softly. _"I am unsure when this message will reach you, but you must prepare yourself. I am bound to take Lord skekMal across the Crystal Sea to you. I have no choice. Please be vigilant; I know he means you harm."_

Memories taken from Rek'yr's mind surged up, the hulking figure of the Hunter that Fr'ou remembered seeing once from afar, his white mask gleaming in the sun.

_"I seek a Gelfling criminal by the name of Leina. She abandoned her service without warning and attacked me on her way out. I bear a scar from her blade. I've come to bring her back."_

Screaming, Fr'oudea dropped the pebble to the floor.

_No_. No. No. It couldn't be.

Merce had lied to them all. She had lied to Fr'ou. She was an enemy of the Lords. She had run away from Lord skekMal, assaulted him, lived in terror of him returning...

Suddenly everything made a terrible kind of sense. 

Leaning over the kitchen sink Fr'oudea began to vomit, her whole body clenching, heaving.


	6. Traitoress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fr'oudea accepts the truth about her friend and skekMal finally boards the Talusa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okayyyyy, I lied, almost at The Big Confrontation but this chapter has a lot, prepare yourselves!

Fr'oudea slumped with her head still hanging over the sink, strings of vomit steaming into the plug hole from her gasping mouth. Residual images from the Dream Etching flickered before her eyes: Lord skekMal, his cloak whipped into a crimson frenzy by the desert winds, the blue-flame char of his stare through that dreadful helm of bone. His growling voice, thick, authoritative, speaking of a Gelfling criminal.

Speaking of _Merce_.

They had told two sides of the same story, Merce and skekMal, both tales of victimhood, in kind. The difference was that Merce had lied whereas the great Lord, it seemed, had _not_ ; noble Rek'yr would never transport a liar, and besides, the Skeksis were too noble and pure to speak falsehoods. This Fr'oudea had always been taught- but what, then, of Merce's Dreamfasted horrors? They _had_ happened, _must_ have, for Fr'oudea to have seen them.

But their context was now entirely changed by the Hunter's account. Merce, lowly Grottan though she was, had been in service to Lord skekMal, her bond to him an honour she should have revered, thanked _Thra_ for. But instead she had resisted him, angered him, resenting every second. This appalled Fr'oudea; although it was never spoken of in explicit terms she had heard that the Skeksis occassionally kept handmaidens, a position that, though simple and discrete, was one of great privilege and trust. It didn't _matter_ whether one desired the Skeksis or not- their touch was to be accepted gladly, without complaint. To think that Merce had rejected it so thoroughly- 

Fr'oudea wiped sweat from her forehead and tried to straighten her posture, but couldn't. She kept thinking of Merce's anguish, her nightmares, how it had broken her heart to imagine the abuse the girl must have endured. But that _abuse_ had merely been her duties, and any punishment the expected consequence of disobeying the will of a Lord. Fr'oudea would have taken Merce's place a hundred times, a thousand. Wouldn't _any_ Gelfling?

Beside Fr'ou the Swoothu chirruped anxiously, trying to rouse her from her slouched state, but she barely heard it amidst her churning thoughts. She couldn't understand how the sweet, strange girl she'd known could be a _traitor_ \- but, at the same time, she could. The outbursts, the way Leina had toyed with Fr'ou so thoughtlessly; it was the way a mindsick child would behave, lashing out, swinging from one mood to another without warning. Furthermore, Merce had demonstrated her capability for violence in her Dreamfast, the Fizzgig dying in her hands, the time she'd made Fr'oudea hit her- there was no reason, then, to doubt that she had attacked skekMal, her tiny fist twisting a blade.

Attacking a Skeksis was an unforgivable horror, like striking a benevolent God. Like streaking shit across a holy place- whatever reason Merce had could never condone it, not in a billion trine.

_And I helped her_ improve, Fr'ou thought. _I went behind the backs of my parents and taught her how to use a weapon._

A tear slipped from the corner of Fr'ou's eye and struck the kitchen countertop. She couldn't switch off her wild swooping love of the little Grottan, who for all her problems was fun, kindhearted, clever, and smelled sweetly of the forest, though she had not set foot in it for many unnum. Giving her up to Lord skekMal would mean relinquishing her to execution, the means of which ranged from decapitation to disembowelment. 

Merely the words surfacing in her mind- Merce's small, scarred head spiralling, her belly bleeding -brought another wash of bile to the back of Fr'oudea's throat. Retching, she clutched the rim of the sink, her hands oily with sweat.

Why _, Merce? Why did you turn on your Master?_

Fr'ou recalled what Merce had said about the death of her brother, but there was no proof of it; it hadn't even been in her Dreamfast. _True_ , Merce was partially blind and had not _seen_ it, exactly, but it seemed too convenient, so much of that story left out. If Merce had only told the truth, at least a little more of it, Fr'oudea though she'd understand, but now she felt the more explanations she heard of the matter the less she'd believe them. 

But hear them she must. If only to allow herself to trust the girl again, _just_ for a moment, let herself believe life could be as it had been. Yet it never would be, for it had been a sickly falsehood all along. After all, hadn't Merce _known_ that the penalty for harbouring a fugitive of the Skeksis was also death, if proved to be willful? The girl had been willing to put Frou's life, Hila'an's life, her parents' all at peril to save herself, hiding behind tears and euphemisms and sympathy.

Was that why, in the beginning, she had kissed Fr'ou in the dark, working herself closer and closer to her heart, to safety? 

_Yes_. _No_. Perhaps both at once.

Despite everything Fr'oudea couldn't forget the occasional spark of contentment she saw in Merce's wet white eyes, or how it feel to lie with her thin, skeletal body pressed to her side. Then again how those same eyes had burned with scorn, that same body had pushed her away, how that mouth- soft, wet, wanting -had lied and brought the Hunter to their doorstep.

How sharp his blades had looked, like the curved teeth of some silvery beast. How _cold_ his stare had been, that of a vengeful king.

He would kill them all.

Shuddering, Fr'oudea used the sleeve of her dress to pick up the dropped Dream Etching without touching it with her skin. Perhaps there was still time to send Merce away, to absolve herself and her family of any guilt. Fr'ou could pretend ignorance, express horror and shame, and Merce would be free, to be caught or to escape again as fate divined. 

"Swoothu, I don't speak your language," Fr'ou said to the still-waiting creature. "But I need to know how long ago it was you were given this message. The last I knew of Rek'yr he was travelling in the far East, just under an unnum's journey away. Your kind travel fast- you could fly so far in a few days, isn't that right?"

The tiny Swoothu nodded, its whiskers shivering. Then it cocked it raised a paw and moved it in a wobbling motion, side to side.

"It's been more than days," Fr'oudea interpreted. 

She thought, and suddenly a terrible thought came to her.

"The storm... you set out before the storm, didn't you? And Rek'yr was already some time into his journey by then."

The creature only looked at her, its tiny, dark eyes unreadable.

"Then he could be anything from a week to only a day away. There's no way of telling how far he is... or how close."

Fear clamped Fr'oudea's heart in its jaws, and on the other side of it something else: anger, resentment, revulsion. She whimpered, having never felt such a tangle of darkness within her before.

*

She would leave tonight, Leina had decided, no matter what effort it took. As she packed her few possessions into her old bag she thought back to the last time she'd so filled it. The night before she'd fled the Hunter, grimly preparing herself for the life she'd been living, until now. Now Leina was fleeing a stranger villain: her own emotions, a creeping, insidious kind of foe.

She would go without telling a soul except Fr'oudea, who she'd need to guide her across the desert. Leina would be sorry to leave Hila'an, whom seemed to have a gruff, respectful affection for her, and regretted that she'd never truly get to know Koron and Tarna beyond her initial, icy impression of them. Perhaps if Leina hadn't been so difficult at first, so broken-

_No_. Leina roughly scrubbed at the beginnings of tears behind her eyeglasses. It was better that they never came to love Merce, that false pretender, as their daughter had. Better she remain a stranger they'd remember briefly in anecdotes to one another before forgetting her again, moving on with their lives.

Leina's hands rested on her spear and shield, now as familiar and comfortable in her grip as a child's toy despite the shortness of time they'd been in her possession. She'd gained a sense of self from them she'd never had while under the Hunter's thumb, nor before that, a simple village outcast. Who had she even been then, what had she been _good_ at, _proud_ of?

All she'd had then was her family and the desire to fit in, nothing greater, nothing more. Leina knew she'd never be a great fighter, nor the fastest flier, but Hila'an had made her see how far she'd come from that sad little blindling, from the beaten dog wincing at skekMal's feet. He-

The cabin door swung open and Fr'oudea stood there, her face looking tight, drawn, unlike her own. She opened a clenched fist and let something fall, clattering, to the floor.

"A Swoothu brought a message for you," she said, flatly. "I don't suppose you've ever received a Dream Etching before?"

Her voice was strangled, even more so than it had been when they'd argued an hour ago. 

"I... haven't," said Leina. "But my mother has, once or twice. You mean there's one on this... stone? Who from?"

Suddenly she felt that old, familiar tightness of fear, like a band around her belly. 

"Just touch it, Merce. Please."

Frowning, Leina bent down to pick up the pebble then stopped, glancing up at Fr'oudea.

"I... you've seen what's on it? The message?"

"Touch the fucking _stone_ , Merce," Fr'oudea snapped, and put her face in her hands.

Leina was stunned; it was the first time she'd ever heard such language pass her friend's lips, and from Fr'oudea's reaction it likely hadn't often done so. Still, Leina obeyed, wondering if her mother had somehow discovered where she was, had learned to Dream Etch despite always claiming she didn't quite have the skill to do so. As her fingers closed around the pebble she was immediately rocked by fleeting images, Rek'yr's face and voice, then him, the dreaded beast, his vicious tones ripping through her.

_He_ was coming. He was coming, and Rek'yr was bringing him to her. 

Leina let go of the stone as if it had burned her but stayed crouching, rigid with a jumble of terror and panic. Practising combat for skekMal's arrival had been hard enough, but _this_ \- nothing could prepare her for the miserable horror of the inevitable. 

_Destiny_ , as the Dousan clan so coolly put it. 

"You lied to us," said Fr'oudea, the words barely comprehensible through the thickness of oncoming tears. "To _me_. You have brought death in return for our kindness, knowing it followed us like a shadow, knowing we'd never have taken you in, if we'd known. I never would have..."

She stopped, sniffing back her tears.

"I'm sorry, Fr'ou," said Leina. "But what _else_ could I have done? I was weak and I needed help. skekMal would have found me straight away without protection."

"You _used_ us."

"I didn't mean to. I didn't. Please believe me. I was trying to protect you."

"No," Fr'oudea snarled. "You've put our necks on the block to flee your own fate. You could have served Lord skekMal quietly and saved so many lives. You should have _done_ it. You should have lain on your back and let him fuck you the way you made _me_ fuck you, the way you _begged_ me to fuck you, but you didn't. You tried to kill him, and now you've killed us, too. We were meant to be your _friends_."

"You are," said Leina.

She crawled to Fr'oudea and tried to put her arms around her legs, ignoring her cries of disgust.

"You have to _understand_ , Fr'ou. Didn't you see my Dreamfast? He raped me, violently, day after day after day. Other Lords- they used me, too, but he was the worst of all because I was so used to feeling like an animal, feeling worthless. I couldn't stand it."

"You should have _taken_ it," hissed Fr'oudea. "Or died with honour."

But she let Leina cry against her legs without shoving her away, and Leina felt her own tears falling onto the back of her head.

"I don't know how much time you have," said Fr'oudea. "So I'll take you across the desert now. We'll travel by Crystal Skimmer- faster than by foot. Then you'll be on your own, and you can ever come back. Never."

"Alright," said Leina, softly. 

She crawled away from Fr'oudea and began to rise to her feet. 

It was then that they heard screams, male and female, ringing through the belly of the ship. The crashing of furniture, the crack of bone. Fr'oudea, wide-eyed, frozen, stared in harrowed incomprehension, but Leina scrambled to the door and locked it before collapsing to the floor again.

"It's too late," said Leina. "He's here. The Hunter."

*

The _Talusa_ cruised lazily in the middle distance, looking to skekMal like a crude toy in comparison to the ships his brethren had sailed once across true oceans. It made sense to him that Leina would commit herself to such a thing, exchanging one plain life for this one, seeking comfort where she could. He'd enjoy ripping it from her, like a veil from the face of an unwilling bride.

"These will be my last words to you before you undertake this cursed task," said Rek'yr, eyeing the ship with trepidation. "So please, listen."

"My ears are open," said skekMal, opening and closing his hands recklessly upon his blades. "I can give you no better than that."

"I told you I will never escort you across the Crystal Sea again," said Rek'yr. "And I will keep that promise. Knowing what you intend to do I cannot do so in good conscience. It is against all that I believe in. If you must hunt here you must seek another guide."

"Once I've claimed my girl I will leave this blasted place," growled the Hunter. "I've had my use of it. But you've served me well, Sandmaster."

The Gelfling nodded, and turned away, clearly too disgusted to meet skekMal's gaze.

"Begone. I wish to speak to you no longer."

"Nor I you," said the Hunter. "I have work to be done."

He strode across the sands, which gently shifted around him, until he was level with the slowly moving outer-wall of the _Talusa_. Sheathing his swords he scaled the side and landing upon deck, breathing in deep. Already the faint, forest scent of his Gelfling whore pricked his nostrils. She was here, alright, hidden in the ship's depths like a crawlie.

"My Lord!"

A male Dousan was steering the ship, his head twisted over on shoulder to goggle at skekMal. The father of the Leina's friend; already the Hunter had forgotten the pointless names Rek'yr had told him. 

"Anchor your ship," snapped skekMal. "Bring your kin to me. You are harbouring a criminal; I will take her from you."

The Gelfling, dumbstruck, fumbled with the anchor, mumbling distractedly.

"My Lord, I don't know what you mean, I..."

"Fine," snarled the Hunter. "I'll find them myself."

He seized the man by the back of the neck and dragged him down inside the ship, pausing in the salon where an elderly Gelfling male and middle aged female sat talking at a table together. The daughter and Leina were both absent. When they saw skekMal and the dangling form of the father in his grip both Gelfling stood up, the elder with difficulty, and began bowing profusely.

"My Lord, what brings us this great honou..."

"Save your graces," snapped skekMal. "As far as I'm concerned you are all accessories to a would-be murderess. Do you know who your daughter has been hiding on this filthy ship?"

He threw the cringing male to the floor and looked from one face to another, watching their expressions turn from anxious bewilderment to horrified realisation.

"Oh, _yes_ ," said the Hunter. "Did none of you question who that blind Grottan cunt was running from? She is a fugitive. A violent treasoner with a warrant on her ugly little head. You will give her to me or you will die, here and now. It will not be quick. I have been to much trouble to find this vicious female."

"My Lord, please believe us, we did not know," the woman cried, openly sobbing. "We believed her to be a fallen woman, a victim of a violent spouse. We never-"

"She was my woman, alright," said the Hunter, grinning. "And will be again. Now where is she, Gelfling? Tell."

"Gone," said the old man, suddenly, his voice stronger than the female's. " _Gone_ , a day ago. In a hurry, too. She did not say why, but she's gone, sure enough."

He looked at skekMal, unflinching. The Hunter didn't like his boldness, recognising a challenge when he saw one.

"You're lying," he breathed. "You dare lie to me, you old wretch?"

"I do _not_ lie, my Lord," said the old one, patiently. "She never was happy here. Took off and left. My granddaughter escorted her. You are a day too late."

The story might have been believable, but skekMal saw the younger male and his wife exchange wide-eyed glances and growled under his breath.

"You protect a would-be killer," said the Hunter. " _Why_? Where is your pride? Are you not _ashamed_ , old one, that your granddaughter is rutting a Grottan whore? A lowly traitor?"

The woman gave a little yelp and covered her face, sobbing. Her husband circled his arms around her and held her close.

"I would give her to you gladly, my Lord, but she is not here," said the old man.

He took a step towards the Hunter, grunting as his knees popped with the motion.

"Chase her across the desert like a petal on the wind, but she will be gone, gone, before you find her. Why don't you turn back, my Lord? Why don't you leave that Grottan well alone?"

skekMal swung out an arm and knocked the old man flat on his back.

"It does not matter that you lie; I have the girl's scent, and I will root her out. This was your chance to die painlessly, but that has passed. I will kill you all, and your traitor-fucker of a daughter."

"Please! Please, my Lord, have mercy!" the younger male cried. "Merce is here! She's still on the ship, in her cabin!"

"Please don't hurt Fr'oudea," the woman sobbed. "She is innocent, my Lord, an innocent-"

"Shut your mouth, you old slattern," said skekMal, and turning back to the old man he slammed the tip of his right-hand sword into his throat, skewing his lying voice box. As the man and woman shrieked in terror the Hunter leaned down and watched the light gutter in the old man's eyes as he died, his stare utterly unflinching. He'd take a chunk of the old coot's spine, the Hunter thought. It was unusual for a Gelfling to have such courage in the face of death.

Turning rapidly on his heel skekMal launched himself at the man, ripping him from his wife and thrusting him against a wall. Using two swords he opened his belly and sowed his innards across the floor, relishing the heat against his hands. The smell of death aroused him, and when he swivelled again to pursue the mother he considered fucking her, the way he had Leina's own mother. But he wanted to save himself for the girl's holes, those he'd awaited for so long. Instead he turned the woman onto her back and drove a sword between her breasts, slowly, watching her heave and struggle and cry. 

When she was gone the Hunter straightened, shaking her blood off him like a dog. Then he raised his head and roared, knowing that wherever she was on the ship the girl would hear him.

"Leina..."


	7. Cave Moth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal and Leina are reunited again, in the most awful of ways

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter you've been waiting for!! Sorry for the delay, I juggle a lot of hobbies and got snowed in 😅

Leina crouched low to the floor, trembling, her body bathed in petrified sweat as the screams rung out again and again. She'd anticipated this day since the moment she'd fled the Endless Forest, dreaming it so often that now it barely felt real. Nevertheless she found herself twitching violently as a roar cut through the cacophony of other voices, its coarseness unmistakable.

_Him_.

The Hunter. 

Beside Leina Fr'oudea stood, swaying slowly, her mouth hanging ajar. Her eyes stared at nothing, and in their darkness Leina saw an emptiness that frightened her almost as much as the other Dousans' dreadful shrieks. 

"Fr'ou," Leina whispered. "Fr'ou, we have to get out of here now, while he's distracted."

"That's... my family," Fr'oudea said, her voice as small as a child's. "He's hurting them."

The screams had reached a near-painful pitch, and Leina had to bite her tongue to stop a cry of her own escaping. After she'd gathered herself she said, "I _know_ , Fr'ou, and I'm sorry. So sorry. But there's nothing we can do about it now. We have to save ourselves. He'll kill us if we stay."

But Fr'oudea remained as she was, gently rocking, her hands twitching at the air. At last the screaming cut to silence, and Leina bowed her head, finding time in that brief quiet to grieve the family she'd come to care for, to feel the first wave of guilt. Then that voice came again, moving through the ship: slow, teasing, sly. Gloating in the knowledge that it couldn't be outrun.

" _Leina_. Will you come to me and kneel like the dog you are? Or will you sacrifice more innocents to save your worthless life? Selfish girl. You _know_ that I will never forsake a hunt. You condemned these creatures to my sword when you stepped foot on this rotten ship. Won't you save the last of them, or will you sell _her_ to me too, little killer?"

Leina clenched her fists, her nails biting her palms. She had forgotten how _cutting_ skekMal had been with his words, slithering cleverly around every fear and insecurity she had as if he'd scented them on her skin. The stirring of old hatred this provoked in her was a welcome outpost amidst her suffocating terror. It kept her mind clear, certain of what she must do.

"Fr'oudea," Leina murmured again. "We have to run, _now_ , before he gets any closer. I can't cross the desert without you. And I don't want to leave you behind."

Fr'oudea's flat eyes slid towards Leina, looking hollow as burrows in the earth.

"He's not _good_ , like we were told," said Leina. " _None_ of the Skeksis are. You _have_ to believe me. This isn't just some punishment. He kills for _fun_. But first he'll torture us both."

"Still no sign of you, woman," said skekMal, his voice now even closer, punctuated by the slamming open of a door somewhere in the ship. "Are you hiding in some hole, hoping I'll pass you by? Foolish creature. I know your stink too well, no matter how much you mask it under the stench of your Dousan comrades."

Another door banged open. Fr'oudea winced, her long fingers clenching.

"You ignore me," said the Hunter. "Brave of you, traitoress, who once obeyed so well. I'll make a bitch of you again, and this time I won't be so generous as to let you off your leash."

A third door, a fourth; the creature was making his way down the corridor, inspecting room after room. He could have searched them faster, Leina knew, drawing out his search for the mere pleasure of it. She could hear the thickness of arousal in his voice, bloodthirst and carnality at once.

"You will not escape me a second time, blinding. It was mere chance that you evaded me- have you savored your freedom, girl? Or did you _crave_ my use of you? You _Gelfing_ are all the same: lost without purpose. Without a _Master_."

Gritting her teeth Leina tried to ignore his words, the slithering misery of knowing they were true. She glanced around the cabin, wondering how much of her possessions she could take without slowing down her escape. She felt Fr'oudea's stare boring into her, still as blank and motionless as before, and wondered if something in the girl's mind had snapped. 

The Hunter was now so close that Leina could hear the rattle of his bone trophies around his waist, the familiar clink of drawn blades.

" _Obstinate_ , aren't you?" said skekMal, a grin in his voice. "Maybe your precious girlfriend will bring you to me. She _will_ , if she knows what's good for her."

At this Fr'oudea jolted as if she'd been struck.

"Don't _listen_ to him," said Leina, fiercely, but the Hunter's hard words carried on.

"Hear me, little Dousan. Bring the lying dog to me and I will spare you. Your mother claimed your innocence; so prove it to me. Show your loyalty to the Lords of the Crystal and hand me the traitor you befriended. I am not known for my mercy but I will make an exception for your honesty."

It was foul, so _foul_ , Leina thought, how he played with them, aware how quickly he could have found their cabin had he really tried. Fr'oudea turned towards the door, her expression wild, fanatic. Leina tried to grab her hand but the girl dodged away as if it was scalding.

"Frou, you can't trust him, he-"

"You didn't even tell me your real _name_ ," said Fr'oudea. "How can I believe a word you say?"

Before Leina could stop her Fr'oudea had unlocked the door and was running down the hallway, her hair streaming behind her like a funeral banner. 

"My Lord, I can bring you to the betrayer. She's here. Please forgive my transgressions; I didn't know, I..."

"Quiet," skekMal snapped. "You will take us back across the desert. That is penance enough. Now, get out of my path."

There was a grunt of pain from Fr'oudea as the Hunter shoved her aside. Aware how little time she had Leina seized her spear and shield from the floor and headed for the doorway, her heart beating a staccato rhythm against her ribcage. She had to get out of the sand ship and take flight across the Crystal Sea; it was likely she'd die of heatstroke or dehydration before finding sanctuary, but it would be better than becoming a prisoner again. 

'An honourable death', as Fr'ou had put it.

As Leina darted through the cabin door she sensed skekMal rising behind her and dropped to a crouch, driving the spear up into his armour. He saw the move and stepped aside, his speed as fluid and instant as it had ever been. But to Leina that moment was long, _terrible_ , for she took in many things at once- the blood dripping from his bone mask, the flash of his blades, like broken half-moons, rising over her, the surprise in his vicious eyes as she barrelled towards him. 

"Girl," he said. "Do you think yourself a warrior? _Folly_. You will not slay me with that toothpick."

"I don't intend to," snapped Leina.

"Then what?" asked the Hunter, taunting. "Run away again? You will _not_. Over three unnum I have hunted you. I have missed that cunt of yours. I'll take it before the day is out."

"No," said Leina. "Never again."

She stepped back through the hallway, her shield raised, spear poised to meet skekMal's blows. In her heart Leina knew that if the Hunter struck her with even half of his full force her arm would snap inwards like a concertina, but she sensed that he _wouldn't_ , not at first. He circled around her, licking his teeth, drool pouring from the tip of his mask. Leina was being _savoured_ , she realised, as a Gelfling might the taste of a delicate sugared fruit. 

"Look at you, Grottan," the Hunter mocked. "Wearing that Dousan shit but just as green as you ever were, underneath. Who was it intending to fool? _Me_? Your idiot lover? Or yourself?"

He was trying to distract her, make her lose her concentration so that he could take her without injury to himself. Having heard a dozen similar insults inside her own head for weeks on end Leina shook them off like water, the head of her spear trained on the soft points she knew lay in the Hunter's armour. 

"I dress like the Dousan because I respect them," said Leina. "You'd know nothing about that, monster. Have you ever had a friend that wasn't Skeksis? Even them- they _lie_ to your face, scheme and plot."

As she spoke she worked her way gradually backwards, repeating Hila'an's lessons inwardly, like a mantra. skekMal watched her with obvious interest, as if she was a pet performing a pretty trick.

" _I_ have no need of friendship," the Hunter sneered. "Nor any distraction from the hunt."

"Then why do you need _me_?" snarled Leina. 

The Hunter took a quick step forward and she raised her spear to block him, her poor sight causing her aim to quiver a little.

" _Why_ couldn't you just leave me alone? You could have carried on with your fucking hunts without me holding you back. You could have told the other Skeksis you _killed_ me."

Of course she knew the answer: _pride_ , obsession, ownership. But the longer Leina kept him talking the less he was likely to notice her edging towards the porthole at the other end of the corridor, just large enough to accommodate a Gelfling. 

"Nothing that is mine escapes me," said the Hunter, edging ever nearer. "Let alone any that has _injured_ me. You will live to regret that day, Grottan."

Leina let out a wild little laugh and something in skekMal's eyes shifted. He lunged forward, and as Leina met his swords with her shield she found herself lifted up against the nearest wall by the blow. Pinned, she stared down into the Hunter's masked face, feeling the wild heat of him, the smell of blood on his breath -

Their _blood, the Dousan_

-and gathering a mouthful of saliva spat toward's skekMal's right eye. As she did so she twisted her spear-hand into his armpit through his robes, grazing skin, and the Hunter released Leina from the wall with a hideous roar. She fell lightly, as Hila'an had taught her, and scrambled back towards to porthole, covering the distance by flight.

"I'd do it all again," she screamed over her shoulder. "And I'd use a bigger blade."

Dropping her cumbersome shield Leina yanked at the porthole, prising it open, and threw herself at the opening. Behind her the Hunter ran, his speed frightening her with its suddeness. Yet it spurred her to scramble faster, squeezing through the gap as if soaked head to toe in oil. Once on the other side she flew without direction, desperate, exultant, knowing the Hunter couldn't follow through the porthole. Knowing-

The whistle of something small and sharp whistled through the air, _several_ somethings, like biting flies, and struck Leina's wings, three on either side. 

_Darts_. The Hunter carried darts.

She tried to keep going, but the pain was like gnawing fire. Another dart struck her thigh, and then she was falling, helpless, helpless. Like the day by the river, when the knife had struck her spine.

The sand winds buffeted Leina this way and that, whipping the spear from her fist, the eyeglasses from her face. When she landed the air was knocked out of her, like a punch, but still through her agony she scrambled in the sands for her eyeglasses. She would get nowhere without them, and so she raked her fingers through the dune, staring with her blighted vision at every hump, every glimmer.

When at last her hands closed on cool glass a foot crushed her fingers flat, making Leina scream out and thrash amidst the sand and her own blood.

"I'll take these," the Hunter growled. "You will not need them for some time."

The foot that had been holding Leina's hand down darted out and clipped her jaw, sending her twisting backwards. Landing on her torn wigs triggered another volley of lancing pains, but still she fought to pull herself upright, her breath a clotted rattle. skekMal dropped to his haunches and grinned from beneath his mask, his right-hand blade pressed to Leina's throbbing cheek.

"A pointless fight, little girl," he said. "But entertaining. Not quite the pathetic cave moth you once were."

Snarling, Leina thrust her head towards the blade, feeling blood course down her cheek and into her grimaced mouth. skekMal yanked his sword away, eyes narrowed.

"You'd kill yourself with my blade?" he snapped.

"Give me a loser's death," said Leina.

Sobs began to shake her body in angry heaves.

"You kill _everything_ you hunt- birds, Arathim; so kill me. Why should _I_ live? Am _I_ special to you, skekMal?"

The Hunter clenched his jaw and shoved her flat against the sand, his torso crushing her face with sand and robes and armour. She felt his hands ripping her thighs apart and shrieked in desperate rage, her legs pummeling the sand.

"Do not value yourself so highly, whore," skekMal breathed. "You are flesh for me to fuck. Your death will come; merely slower than my other prey." 

Leina felt him ram three talons into her dry cunt, knuckling her deep, his thumb on her clitoris sparking nothing but numb misery. Still the Hunter thrust in her until blood or some unwelcome wetness coated the hole, and instantly withdrew to make way for something more. Leina gripped the front of skekMal's robes with her teeth and screamed against him as he pressed two members against the aperture and forced them within, inch by inch. 

"I have thought of you on long nights," the Hunter breathed, his voice thick with a mixture of gloating triumph and a strange, choking fury. "Violent little traitor. How tight you'd feel around me. How you would hate me as you took my seed. But the thought that spurred me most-"

He began to thrust wildly into her, ignoring the futile scratching of her little hands and feet upon him.

"-Was how you cried when I made you come for the first time. And so many other times after."

A fist sized Leina's throat and squeezed until her shrieks became airless gasps.

"Give me your tears, Leina. I have earned them."


	8. Little Lunatic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal relishes the recapturing of his pet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes at the end

The girl had changed. 

She _felt_ the same, her tiny body as delicate as a bird's beneath him, her walls exquisitely tight and warm. But gone was the cringing, sullen obedience of before; now she was wild, reckless, and she did not fear death as she once had. The Hunter had known there was a touch of madness in her- there _had_ to be for her to dare stab him and escape in the first place -but the look in her pale, watering eyes now was almost maniacal, the look of a creature with nothing left to lose.

Or so _she_ believed.

As he squeezed the breath from the girl's throat skekMal grinned to himself, pleased that he'd thought to keep Leina's mother alive.

"You have _guts_ to look at me like that, whore-cunt," he growled. "I can do worse than fuck or kill you. Or did your fall from the sky knock that knowledge from your empty head?"

He released the girl's throat, allowing her to draw a whooping breath. She hissed something at him, her voice too thin for the Hunter to catch the words over the rhythmic clink of his armour and trophies as he rutted her.

"What are you whispering, girl?" said skekMal, lowering his head to her bloody mouth. "Do you beg for death again?"

Her warm breath on him smelled as sweet as he remembered. If possible it made him even harder, for it brought back a hundred memories of it on his cock as she sucked him, her face leaning close to him as she sewed shut the wounds left by the Arathim. Of-

The girl lunged forward and sunk her teeth into the Hunter's jaw, their tiny points sinking deep. The pain of it both enraged and engorged him; the Gelfling clearly had enough fight in her to make the long hunt a worthy one, after all. Balling a fist skekMal struck the girl hard enough to crack a tooth against his knuckle, causing Leina to release him at once, gargling blood.

"You will lose a tooth for every bite you try, so choose wisely," snarled the Hunter. "You would not be half so pretty with a mouth full of empty gums."

She _was_ pretty, still, filthy as she was with blood and paint and sand clinging to her tiny face, with the scar he had carved into her many unnum ago. Other Gelfling would not prize her; their standards were harsh and horribly twisted by the Skeksis court. But skekMal, although no connoisseur, thought her beautiful, whether due to nostalgia or the reality of her features he neither knew nor cared.

Tears tracked through the blood on the girl's cheeks, yet still she glared with that lunatic hatred. It delighted the Hunter to consider what lengths it would take to crush her into obedience again. Once he'd thought undue torment a waste of his resources, a petty sport such as his brethren favoured. His past servants had been so biddable that there had been little cause to put them in their place beyond the rut, and if they gave him one he tended to kill them immediately to save himself any trouble. The girl was the first he'd devoted particular time into provoking a rise out of- but she needed to learn submission again, all the same.

The Hunter thrust into her a few final times, making the most of the girl's furious, wordless cries.

"You have ached for me inside you," he grinned, watching her expression change from anger to misery in an instant. "I know it. I know you better than you know yourself, girl."

At last he came, the release as wildly euphoric as he had hoped it would be all this time. The girl bucked and thrashed uselessly beneath him, spraying blood with every twist of her little head. 

"Get off me!" she barked at him. "Get off me, get _off_ me, you fucking animal!"

Growling, the Hunter pulled out of the Gelfling and stood over her, a foot on her belly to hold her down. His cocks still hung loose from his robes; sneering he bent over her, pleased that another opportunity to humiliate the upstart girl had come to mind.

" _Animal_ , you call me," he breathed. "Then I'll act as animals do and mark my territory. You should not speak back to me, blindling."

He unleashed streams of piss upon her, a steaming trio that struck the girl's upturned face and soaked her dress even as she shrieked and fought beneath his foot. The look of utter disgust and wretchedness that possessed the Gelfling then almost made the Hunter hard again, but the day had tired him too much to try her a second time. Lifting his foot he released the girl, knowing that she was in too poor a condition to run.

To his disbelief she dragged herself up onto her hands and knees and began to scrub at her skin with sand like a shrew, trying to clean herself of him.

"You will rub sand into your wounds, little fool," said skekMal. "Leave it be."

The girl only uttered a hate-filled sob and carried on, making herself bleed with the rough motions. There was something so pathetic about the sight that the Hunter felt a rush of hatred towards her, this little broken beast that he had made his quarry. Grumbling under his breath he tugged a length of robe from within his robes and seized the girl's wrists, binding them flat against her body. 

"You want to behave like a wild Fizzgig pup then I will tie you like one," he said. "The way I used to. You must miss those old days, the way you have my cock."

Again the girl snapped at him, her mouth this time too far from his flesh to seek purchase. It must have hurt her to even try, her wounded gum still streaming. It was obvious that she would continue until he forced her to stop, even if he beat her black and blue. Fortunately the Hunter had anticipated such trouble and prepared for it. Again he reached into his robes and withdrew a leather muzzle, which he had sometimes used on prey he wanted alive to lure a bigger, more valuable catch. Seeing it the girl suddenly stilled, her thin body rigid in his grip.

"What... what are you doing, Hunter?" she asked, her words thick from her swollen mouth. 

"You can't keep your fangs to yourself, nor your foul temper. You will wear this until I want you to speak, and that will not be often. I have no interest in your blather."

Although the girl yanked her head about the Hunter muzzled her easily, pulling it tight behind her wet hair. Her white eyes squinted at him with such intense, wordless hatred that he laughed, struck suddenly by the success of owning her again.

"Now," he said. "I will take you back to that blasted ship. Your Dousan lover will sail us across the Sea and return us to the Forest again."

Turning and glancing upwards, he saw the other Gelfling standing on the _Talusa's_ deck, her face bleak and still. She had observed the whole altercation, it seemed, and lifted not a finger to prevent it.

_Good_. She was loyal, as Rek'yr had claimed, after all.

*

Back on the ship the Hunter dragged the girl to the small bath that was on board and washed her clean of filth, more to keep her wounds from infection than any dislike of the dirt. Bound as she was Leina couldn't struggle, but her white eyes watched him resentfully as he roughly worked his talons over her flesh and plucked his darts from her wings. It would take many unnum for her to fly again, and even then they would be weak, tattered things, a mockery of what they'd once been. Clearly this hadn't quite occurred to Leina yet, or she might have lost her spirit the way his other servants had done.

"How many times will I have to handle you like a helpless bratling?" he snapped at her. "It is beneath me. I should hold you under this water and drown you, little bitch."

He felt the Gelfling grow limp, inviting the threat, and again dislike rose in him. skekMal struck the girl's head against the tub and dragged her out of it again. Naked, gleaming, she looked like a captured water nymph, or a Drenchen whore, wild and terrible. _This_ was why he kept her, despite it all, he told himself. 

She made such an excellent prize.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So I was wondering what kind of ending you would like for this story- it's a way off yet as obviously we've only just entered the good bit however I'd like my end goal in place from here onwards! I have a few options in mind, but ideally I'd prefer it to be neither too unrealistically happy nor depressingly sad. I love writing this and all of my dark stories, but one of my favourite non con fics of all time had a very tragic ending and during this horrible time I'd like to avoid that level of bleak 😅 I read all your feedback so let me know your thoughts readers!


	9. Good Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina resolves to fight against the Hunter, no matter what it takes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooooooo, are you all enjoying quarantine? Here's something to distract you from our apocalyptic circumstances

Leina was drowning under the swell of her own emotions, more coming by the second, thick and fast. The unnum and trine of enslavement hung ahead of her, suffocating and uncertain number. Dying, it seemed, was out of the question, whether by the Hunter's hand or her own- he'd left her with no means to end herself, even if her arms had been free to seek them. She'd tried banging her already bruised head off the bathroom floor to knock herself out, but skekMal tightened her ropes in a way that prevented her from bending far enough to strike the surface.

There he had left her, bound and alone with the cacophony of her own desperate ruminations.

Still, there _was_ an image that comforted Leina slightly: the surprise and disdain in skekMal's eyes as she'd driven her head into his blade, or as she caught his flesh in her teeth. She smiled grimly behind her muzzle, rolling the taste of blood, his and hers, across her tongue. Whether Leina ultimately lived or died there were still small victories to be made against the monster and that, surely, was worth something.

Leina pulled herself up into a sitting position, shaking out her torn wings with a whimper of pain. There would be no flying for some time, nor using her eyes much, now the Hunter had taken her glasses from her. No matter; Hila'an's lessons had taught her things even a crippled blindling could make use of. 

_Hila'an._

A sob rose in Leina's chest as she thought of the old man, now lying dead somewhere in the belly of the ship. Hila'an was another lost voice to add to the chorus of those who wanted her live, to fight. If Leina was to lose her life then she _had_ to cleave to her vow, go down fighting rather than slipping passively away to escape her pain. It was the only path that felt just, that didn't make her want to bawl with shame and anguish.

The urge to withdraw into herself, to become that cringing girl of before was still so shamefully strong. How easy it would to become the Hunter's passive little creature again, stroking and sucking him when he asked for it, letting him ride her whenever he liked. There had been less pain in those days, unless skekMal woke with the taste for it, and there were times she almost thought she sensed an offhand _affection_ for her, or at very least a kind of ease. 

Growling Leina shook the memories away, appalled that she'd let them call to her again. To crawl to a beast was cowardice, was _losing_ ; if skekMal wanted a dog he'd have a wolf, the kind that paced the Desert at night.

It was an hour or more before the Hunter came back, the stink of death upon him. Clearly he had returned to the slaughtered Dousan to claim his trophies, bones that hung from his belt, still glistening with blood.

"Your girl is proving herself of use to me," he said, coldly. "Dousan flesh is cursed, and I will not eat of it as I eagerly as I would another kill. The daughter eagerly offered to take their corpses to the desert and bury them. Such devotion. So sweet." 

Poor Frou. How conflicted she must be, desperate to serve her Master, yet still grieving the loss of her parents and Grandfather. Picturing her willowy figure stooped with wracks of tears as she pitched a spade into the shifting sands made Leina gnash her teeth behind her muzzle. skekMal barked out a laugh. 

"Being parted from me has made you feral," he said. "Or was this what you always were, mad little crawling Grottan?"

He stepped close enough for her to see his eyes clearly, the interest in them.

"You know nothing of your own blood, do you? Only what the Stonewood clan whisper of, half-remembered stories and fears changed in the telling. You might have been the only Grottan most of them clapped eyes on in their pathetic lives. If they knew more they might have driven you out instead of merely scorn you."

Leina turned her head aside, not wanting to listen. The Hunter circled her, enjoying even that slight reaction.

"When I first plucked you I thought little of your kind. You were weak, sickly, easy pickings for the taking. I did not account for you inheriting that Grottan fierceness. In battles of old they made explosives, used strange magic upon their foes. Fearsome little cunts; you never seemed to take after them, until now. What will I learn of you next, girl? Will your hearing improve to the sharpness of your lost brethren? Will your broken eyes learn to see in the dark? I wonder."

He seized Leina by the scruff of her neck and dangled her before him, running a critical glance over her scarred flesh.

"If you had been raised by your own you would have been a liability. Dead many unnum ago. I kept a whore who knew magic, and that ended her, in time. You are better off stunted, with only madness as your ally."

Leina squirmed in his grip like a maggot in a Fizzgig's claw, trying to swing her bound legs against him. The Hunter turned and crushed her against the wall, clearly expecting to knock the fight out of her, but although her wings burned with pain she bucked and fought until sweat broke out on her forehead.

"You will not goad me to kill you, " said skekMal. "But you should learn to fear again. If not for _you_ then for the Dousan girl. Or for your traitor of a mother."

_Traitor_.

Leina stopped moving and stared at skekMal, trying to discern if he was bluffing. She mumbled against the muzzle, doing little more than smearing saliva across her mouth.

"Leave my mother alone. She's got nothing to do with this."

"A _bold_ lie, Gelfling. It was _she_ who helped you escape me. Did you think I would not learn of it? I smelled you all over her when I had her stitch the very wound you put in me. No mistaking your stink, girl. And she confessed. Begging and screaming like a childling she told me all."

The emotion that seized Leina then was more terrible than fear, colder, deeper, like a nail in the base of her skull.

"No. No. It's not true."

"I knew you would deny it," said skekMal, sneering beneath his mask. "So I brought something of hers with me. Here. You will know if I speak truth." 

From a pocket in his robes the Hunter pulled a white bundle, stained and pitifully tattered. Seizing hold of Leina's muzzle he yanked it down and thrust the stale bundle against her face, smothering her nose and mouth. She smelled her mother at once, the musky bread-and-cloves scent so dear to her, and under that the salt of blood and semen. Screaming against the cloth Leina realised what had happened, that another had suffered so much for her protection. 

"She still lives," said skekMal, tossing the cloth to one side. "I spared her. If you do not obey me and keep your teeth and hands to yourself I will tear her head from her filthy neck and make you drink from it."

Leina stopped screaming as quickly as she'd begun, her teeth snapping together so hard her tongue bled. Helpless, raging, she uttered a strangled moan as the Hunter chuckled and released her from the wall.

"I hate you," she said. "I hate you."

But when he drew her body against him she didn't bite him, not even when he forced the bloodstained talon of his thumb into her mouth.

"Good girl," purred the Hunter.


	10. The Hunter And The Waif

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter takes a little more of Leina away from herself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long!! I've struggled to write anything this week due to the pandemic stressing me tf out. Enjoy

Fr'oudea patted the last mound of sand down over the bodies of her family and crumpled, heaving, upon it, tears streaming from her eyes. She'd known since witnessing the Dream Etching meant for Merce- _Leina_ -that the Skeksis Lord would kill them all, but still every cell in her small body ached with grief. This in itself was terribly shameful; it was skekMal's will that they had died and _she_ had lived, after all.

For so many trine Fr'ou had ached to be trusted as she was now, long anticipating the swell of glory. Now that glory was tainted and foul, like a jewel trodden deep into wet mud. Or bloody sand.

Eventually she got to her feet and stared up at the _Talusa_. It was a beautiful ship, one she'd clambered over eagerly as a child, even thought of as an inanimate member of her own family. It lay like a hollowed corpse before her, still and silent. Although she strained her ears she could hear nothing from within- no Skeksis roars, no screams, nothing like what she'd seen before.

_Oh, Thra_.

Fr'ou's stomach clenched as she thought of Merce arched beneath the Hunter, a curious mix of envy and horror cleaving her near in two. It made her think of things she'd seen in the Crystal Sea, monsters grappling one another for dominance, neither killing nor the rut but both at once, sweating, spitting, _primal_. So far from the expected gentility and grace of a Lord of the Crystal.

Fr'ou had watched in sick fascination, trying to grasp what was between the two. They were more than Master and servant, that was evident. The chemistry of hatred and loathing had been palpable, like a fog in the air. 

No wonder Merce had never loved her; Fr'ou could never have compared to a Lord.

When Fr'ou eventually ventured back into the ship she stumbled upon skekMal striding up one corridor. Paling, she dropped into a quick bow. From the corner of her eye she saw Merce slung, bound and motionless, over one of the Lord's shoulders, a tangle of white sheets over the other. 

"Where... where are you going, my Lord?" Fr'oudea murmured. "Where are you taking M... the traitor?"

Merce's- no, _Leina's_ face twitched, and the white eyes above the ghastly leather of the muzzle slowly closed. Of course the _traitor_ didn't want to face her, couldn't bear the betrayal- but Fr'oudea knew it was humiliation that shut her lids like that, disgust at haven't been defeated after so many weeks training maniacally to avoid it. Despite knowing that she should resent the girl Fr'ou felt only guilt, so strong she could taste it like bile on her tongue.

"Don't look so frightened, Dousan," snapped the Hunter, his bulk filling the hallway like a black and crimson boulder. "Your _lover_ will not die on this journey. I am taking her to the deck. Open air. This infernal ship smothers me."

"Of course, my Lord," Fr'oudea whispered. "You... you wish to set sail in the morning, then?"

"You've wasted the day putting your kin in the dirt," skekMal sneered, turning his masked face to one side. "What day is left to travel with? Unless you can sail at night; who knows what you Sand Gelfling are about."

"I... would prefer not to, my Lord," said Fr'ou.

Murmuring apologies Fr'ou slipped back and let the Lord stride past her. For a split second she almost believed that skekMal would lunge at her, end her as swiftly as he had his her parents and Grandfather. But instead he only huffed impatient air through his nostrils and carried Leina up the ladder to the deck, his tail frisking every rung.

_Of course_ , thought Fr'oudea, in a strange, sad inner voice. _He is the Hunter. He spends his life on foot, chasing his catch. He's not used to having a roof over his head._

In another time she might have been fascinated by such a rare display of vulnerability. Now she felt only dread, misery, helplessness, and amongst it the strangest sense of satisfaction.

_This_ was the life she had wished for: the gift of servitude. What all Gelfling desired. Hers. Hers at last.

*

skekMal stood on the _Talusa's_ deck and stared at the yawning expanse of the desert around him, hating it, yearning for the verdant wilds of the Endless Forest. The ever-lasting call of the hunt was chiming sweetly, and he didn't like that he couldn't pursue it across desert without the Dousan bitch guiding him. It was a weakness, opening him up to two potential attackers, if he didn't watch the surviving Gelfling closely.

skekMal turned, watching Leina sit, bound and shuddering with resentment in the makeshift nest he'd made from bedsheets on the deck. She hadn't tried to harm him since he'd threatened her mother's life, but he knew far better than to assume she'd behave herself for long. Inspecting her slim, green nakedness he thought again how much she'd changed. She wasn't so emaciated now, and the stare that had once avoided his at all costs bored through him, an ever-simmering challenge.

Marching across the deck he ripped the muzzle off Leina's face and watched her lick her dry lips, wincing as her tongue touched her broken tooth.

"I will not have you looking at me like an equal," said skekMal. "Some Dousan cunt gives you a spear and a shield and suddenly you have airs and graces. You always _did_ fancy yourself above your station."

Leina didn't reply, her ears barely twitching to register that she'd heard him. Darting out a hand the Hunter seized her head by the hair, the silk of it delicious against his coarse palms. He thought of how often Leina used to comb it with the hairbrush skekSil had given her, so bold, knowing of the blade hidden inside. Growling, the Hunter's grip tightened.

"Arrogance. A taste of adventure and you think you're _brave_. Ha. I recall the songs you'd sing in the Forest, the stories you'd whimper to yourself, trying to strain the courage to escape me. There was one I had you tell me once, one of the few your folk told of me without knowing _what_ I was. One about a girl, like you. Do you remember it, blindling?"

Again the girl ignored him, her white eyes glaring past him. With a grunt the Hunter twisted a knot of it close to her scalp and pulled a blade from his side. The minute the cold metal touched Leina's scalp she gasped and wriggled.

"Answer me, girl. I will not abide by your cheek."

She took a shallow breath and said, "You mean 'The Hunter And the Waif.'"

"Aye. Remind me of that story."

The girl grimaced, but replied in a dull, sulking tone.

"There was a young and beautiful girl who strayed so deep into the Forest that she became lost, and cried for days for her parents to rescue her. The Hunter, stalking nearby, took a fancy to her soft and tender meat. He snatched her up and took her to his lair, stripping her clothes away so that he might cook and eat her. The poor waif stared at him with her pretty eyes and begged..."

Leina paused, her lips folding back from her teeth in disgust.

"Forgotten the rest, have you you?" the Hunter taunted. 

He dragged the blade quickly back, shearing a length of hair from the girl's head. As the strands fluttered against her exposed breasts she gasped.

"I... she begged the Hunter to spare her, thinking he might take pity on such a small, precious creature. But the Hunter laughed and said, "Stupid little waif. You're nothing but a mouthful to me." Then he _devoured_ her."

The Gelfling spat the last words with such venom that skekMal was almost impressed by her gall. 

"You've always been that little waif," he said. "Hoping for mercy, destined to be used and swallowed by your betters. Maybe if you weren't so pretty you wouldn't be so bold."

Again the Hunter sawed at her hair, cutting the braids until there was only an inch left behind. As each fell the girl jumped and whimpered, then suddenly twisted her head in his grip, clearly hoping to drive the knife far deeper than he willed it. skekMal's other arms shot forward and gripped tight, bruising her jaw. He held her so until the last braid slipped from her head, and took it to hang amongst his other trophies. 

"There," said skekMal, running his talons over the shorn, delicate orb of the girl's head. "Look at yourself in my blade. Remind yourself what you are. _Scum_ , who comes from scum. Leave your fancies of besting me behind. They are done with."

He held the side of his blade before her, and the misty eyes fixed on the reflection upon it. She had perhaps avoided mirrors and such since the day he'd mutilated her ear, and now she was truly seeing the wreck he'd made of her already strange appearance. Sorrow and shame and horror flicked across her expression, but then she coughed out a laugh.

"You think I care what I look like now? Now, when I'd rather be dead than let you touch me again? You're _mad_."

The Hunter cuffed her across the face, knocking her bound body against the deck. The ropes binding her made pretty, raw patterns on her flesh, and with a coy grin he knelt upon her, undoing his breeches. 

"The more marks I put on you the more you become mine again. So far from that pretty woods-waif, so far from anything known to Gelfling kind. You're a beast of my own making. I don't give a fuck what you think of it."

He rutted her amidst the stolen sheets, holding her bound wrists above her shaved head so that her back arched and strained. The dying sunlight played across her thin body, the patterning of shadows cupping her face in a way that was almost ghoulish, like a turnip carved during one of the Gelfling festivals. Her sweat as he lapped it from her skin was as salty-sweet as he remembered it, like the honey from a Crystal Hornet's hive. He'd never felt more like a King than he did now, taking the maiden he'd stolen twice over.

None of the others had felt so good, not the mad Vapran, not the Sifan witch, not the simple Spriton but had died of shock before he'd even spilled his seed within her. They had all given up hope, in the end, given up fight. Not his Leina. So small and weak and fine was she in his grasp, but still shuddering with fury. That such a tiny thing contained such boundless vitriol fascinated him, staved off the boredom that finished all his quarry, in the end.

After the Hunter had finished in the Gelfling he held her against him, feeling the furious beat of her heart against his hand like a Unamoth in a bell jar.

"Leina," he said, enjoying how stiff she became at the sound of her name on his tongue. "How did you pass your nights in those unnum away from me? Did you rest easy?"

He didn't think she would reply, but she did, in a voice so bitterly acrid that he chuckled to hear it.

"There were... nightmares. It was... it was like I'd never gotten away."

The Hunter dragged a lazy hand across her cunt, feeling her shiver at his caress.

"And you never will again." 

He slept a few hours, waking from time to time to find the girl still awake, leaning as far from him as she possibly could. He pushed her to the edge of the sheets, as one might a troublesome pet, keeping a rope threaded through his fist. He could feel her staring at him, perhaps weighing up whether or not she could tear his throat out without him waking.

At last he said, "If you will not sleep then put yourself to work. Roll over and suck me, dog. No teeth or I'll beat that fucking jaw until you rattle."

"I am _not_ your dog, monster," the girl hissed.

But she did as he asked, her tiny, warm tongue quickly bringing him to climax.


	11. Malevolent Ruler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal puts the Gelflings in their rightful places- according to his own sickening rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could swear this chapter posted but as I'm correcting a few errors in chapter 12 it says draft... apologies if chapter 11 didn't materialise and the narrative didn't make sense lol. I'm working on chapter 13 right now so you may want to read this one while you're waiting and fill in the gaps

It was the singing grind of blades being sharpened that jolted Leina awake, her eyes snapping open so quickly that the daylight made them water. She shook her head from side to side and tried to inch herself up into a sitting position, appalled that she'd managed to sleep at all. Leina had planned to lie awake all night, spend the time thinking through some new plan to escape the Hunter, but she'd been as tired as the dead and besides, the terrible warmth of the Skeksis at her back had lulled her in spite of herself.

It was revolting how she'd grown so _used_ to him, the way a jailed prisoner was familiar with their shackles. Even worse, now, knowing that he'd attacked, threatened, _abused_ her mother- Leina moaned against her muzzle, guilt clenching her stomach into a fist. Whatever happened to Leina _herself_ was nothing, _nothing_ in comparison to what Salys must have suffered. 

Leina tried to shake the oncoming images of it from her mind but they came thick and fast regardless- her mother's screaming face, maggot-white and twisting as skekMal laboured above her, using her like he might his own fist, rough and careless. To think he'd filled Leina's mouth and throat with one of the same cocks that had been within Salys- Leina had to struggle not to cough bile up against the suffocating leather across her mouth.

The monster could _never_ be allowed near Salys again again, never, never. If that meant remaining his unwilling servant until death to secure her safety then so be it. It wouldn't take away the dread weight of Salys' pointless sacrifice, but it felt _just_ , or as just as anything could be in this hateful world.

Yet any end was a far, far away point in Leina's life; the Hunter would never have travelled such lengths without destroying her if that were not the case.

But to live with this monster, to endure him, felt impossible. There was no choice that didn't bite Leina like a double-ended trap, closing tighter and tighter around her. She was beginning to doubt the benevolence of Thra and the spirits beyond it for allowing such a sick existence; did _It_ feel that she deserved it for not lying down to endure her destiny? Was this life a divine punishment of some kind?

Leina wasn't sure that she believed it. She was no death-worshipper, after all.

Across the deck skekMal raised his head to look at her, saying nothing. Without her eyeglasses he appeared only as a dark smear to Leina, but she knew his shape so well that she felt the exactness of his gaze, cold, gloating, dismissive. Leina turned away, disgusted, wondering if his strange obsession with her would simmer away now that he'd caught her so completely. Soon she would be second to the hunt again, no more important than a rag used to wipe the spending of lust. 

Suddenly a pain griped Leina's abdomen, low and seizing, making her gasp. She hoped she didn't need to relieve herself; there was no way off wriggling free from the ropes to visit the latrine, and she couldn't _stand_ the thought of going in full view of the Hunter. Feeling a wetness on her inner thighs Leina looked down, shocked by the slick of crimson staining her skin and the white sheet. 

_Moon blood_. It hadn't come to her for many, many unnum, before the Hunter had taken her. Stress and the wasting of her flesh had dried it away, and Leina had been too consumed by every _other_ fear and misery to think much of it, except for the occasional pang of relief. She'd never been sure if a Skeksis' seed could take root in her Gelfling womb, or if the Lords could even make life at all. From what skekMal had implied in their many conversations around the camp fire it had seemed not; immortals, after all, lived forever and, thus, would have no natural reason to breed.

The Lords rutted out of pleasure, Leina supposed, and that alone.

As she thought this the Hunter released a growling chuckle, and she heard him get to his feet.

"I smell the season on you, girl. I thought you barren, another failure of your flesh. Seems I was wrong."

He crouched and pulled the ropes free of her arms and legs, seizing one wrist so tightly the joint popped.

"Make a move to strike me and I will break every limb, just as I'll break your _mother's_ when we return to the forest. Would you make your own a cripple on your account?"

Leina shook her head sullenly. 

"Fib-teller. You have done worse. Remember how many deaths are on your head, blindling."

Rubbing her wrists and ankles Leina hunched low, deciding that if she couldn't disobey the Hunter outright she would at least display her dislike in every pose and motion. She tried not to flinch as he ran a talon across her thigh and tasted it, his tongue lapping at her blood.

"You will never carry, as long as you are mine," said the Hunter. "Relieved, are you? Maidens like you have begged me not to put my seed in them, afraid that they would grow fat and full with my offspring. I've none to give, nor would I desire it. I have no time for such burdens. Would _you_ have wanted it, if I hadn't come for you? To bring a litter of screaming brats into the world?"

Leina thought of her birth mother, who had died a futile death attempting to keep her infant self safe from this very monster, and shook her head again. 

"Wise of you," said the Hunter. "A poor mother you'd make, selfish little whore."

He ran a hand across Leina's concave stomach and she shuddered, long and hard.

"Turn your back to me, girl, and I'll see to your wings. No good to me if the dart wounds fester and you fall to sickness again."

Again, _again_ , here was the maddening echo of events that had come before, as if Leina's life was one gruesome circle. Slowly she swivelled and allowed skekMal to handle her wings, which throbbed agonisingly against his rough touch. Once done cleaning them he gripped the back of her neck and twisted her up towards him, his mask scratching the knob of her spine.

"Do not think you have even _begun_ to pay for escaping me. I know your weak form cannot take all your punishment at once, that is all."

Leina clenched her fists, choosing not to reply.

"So much _pretense_ ," skekMal hissed. "I smelled your fear all over the ship like Makrak piss the minute I set foot on it. Act like you do not care for yourself all you want; when I've crushed every fingernail on those pretty little hands of yours you'll soon be on your knees for me."

The Hunter pushed her forward, into the sheets, and forced her fingers to splay out upon them. His weight on Leina's back smothered the breath from her, and despite herself she began to panic. 

"There was a time you wouldn't _dare_ raise hand nor blade to me," said skekMal. "Nor speak out of turn. Perhaps those days will come again." 

Clenching Leina's right hand into his own the Hunter squeezed, putting pressure on the fingertips until they felt almost white hot with pain. Leina screamed against her muzzle, thrashing against the Skeksis' bulk, but it was like trying to shake off a mountain. A grisly crack rang out as a nail on her right thumb fragmented.

" _Beg_ for my forgiveness," said the Hunter, softly, against Leina's ear. "I have none, but I want to hear you say it."

Leina banged her head against the deck, hoping the second round of pain would distract her from the first, but her fingers felt as if they would burst under the pressure of the Hunter's grip. Her screams took on a Fizzgig quality, hoarse and wild. 

"Where are your words, mouthy cunt? You often have so many."

Leina could hear the grin in the Hunter's tone, and knew that if she didn't give him what he wanted he would destroy her hands without another thought. Without those she would have even less chance of outliving him, reduced to a defenceless hole.

" _Beg_ , girl," said the Hunter. "Or are you so cocky you have forgotten how?"

"P-please," Leina blurted out.

The word was like phlegm in her mouth, making her wince.

"Go on," skekMal growled. "More."

The pressure on her fingers had released a little.

"Please... forgive me."

The pleas, barely distinguishable through the muzzle, had skekMal laughing cruelly.

"You're _missing_ something, aren't you?"

Leina screamed again, as much with anger as pain.

"My... my _Lord_ ," she said, and at last the Hunter let go of her aching hand. He stood over Leina as she nursed her bloody fingernails, scarcely able to bear the pain. She seethed with humiliation that he'd been able to dredge what he wanted out of her so simply.

"If you weren't bleeding I would have broken them all," said skekMal. "Give thanks that I know your limits, blindling."

Leina only moaned in reply.

*

It was only after Fr'oudea heard Lord skekMal enter the belly of the ship again that she dared head up to the deck. She didn't want to get in his way, wary of how quickly his rage was roused, and besides, the sight of him and Leina together made her feel physically unwell.

Fr'ou steered the Talusa in the general direction of the Endless Forest, a destination that was at least a week or so away to the South. The winds were so high that she felt her cheeks beaten raw by the force of it, and it rippled the sails like the skin of a drum. It should have been an invigorating sail, but she was taken up by her own shameful grief, making every pleasure feel like spite against the memory of her family.

She should have been at peace with their loss, as life following the Dousan religion had prepared her to be. There should have been calm in the thought that they had returned to Thra- but there wasn't, couldn't be when her parents at least had perished screaming, forgetting in their final moments the detachment and serenity of death. They, too, had rejected the will of their Lord, just as Leina had before.

_Leina_.

It seemed the girl _still_ didn't understand the magnitude of what she'd done, the selfish evil of it, not completely. Even now Leina seethed against her Lord, and Fr'ou was apalled, even disturbed by it. _How_ had this Gelfling forgotten her place in the world? What had broken in her mind to make her _think_ she had the right to resist a Guardian of the Crystal?

Part of Fr'ou knew why, the majority of her resisted. She couldn't bear to think a Lord had mistreated anyone, could be wrong in any way. If Lord skekMal had caused Leina or Fr'ou any suffering then they had earned it, and should thank him for putting them in their place.

All day Fr'oudea sailed, her arms and back aching from guiding the ship against the perpetual sandstorm. It was only when the sun began to sink again that skekMal returned to the ship's deck, sniffing the air, his gleaming eyes slitted against the winds.

"Enough," he said. "You will guide me on the hunt."

"Yes, my Lord," said Fr'ou, quickly.

Throwing the anchor she tried to quell her hammering heart. It was an _honour_ to accompany a Lord, the very highest, and considering what she'd unwittingly done to undermine him Fr'ou didn't feel worthy of it. He barely glanced at her as she guided him across the sands, absorbed in the practices of his hunt.

Fr'oudea watched him from the corner of her eye, head lowered, as he set traps and sniffed the air for traces of his prey. Few had seen Lord skekMal at work, or even knew that he and the infamous Hunter were one and the same. It would be Frou's story to tell wide-eyed grandchildren, one day, leaving the darker parts of the story unspoken.

For an hour they hunched together in the dark, waiting for the stalked creature to stumble into the Lord's trap. Even crouched six feet away from the Hunter Frou felt herself trembling, overwhelmed by his divinity. To think that _she_ , of the maligned Dousan clan, was allowed to-

A sudden, quick motion came from her right and Fr'oudea found herself being seized by the back of her dress, suspended, kicking in midair over the metal jaws of the trap. She stared at the gleaming teeth and shrieked, thinking how much it would hurt as they snarled into her flesh. It made her forget that she shouldn't be afraid to die.

"Please, _please_ , my Lord, don't kill me!"

"Quiet, filth," said skekMal, his voice soft, thick with menace. "The Sand Master told me you and the Grottan girl were close. I don't like it. So much as _look_ at her and you will yearn to go the way of your traitor family. I will make your end longer and harder than theirs." 

Staring into the trap Fr'ou nodded again and again, unable to stand the sight of the iron maw any longer. 

"Yes, my Lord, yes, my Lord, the _betrayer_ is nothing to me."

"Good."

skekMal jerked Fr'oudea back onto her feet and snorted an impatient breath through his nostrils.

"Now stop breathing so fucking hard. My prey will hear it."


	12. Spellstress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gelfling girl provokes skekMal's suspicion anew...

They returned to the ship stinking of blood, the Hunter and the Dousan girl, carrying skekMal's kill in two halves between them. The Hunter could have easily carried it alone, but he took a grim satisfaction in seeing the useless creature buckle under the weight of slain meat, her stupid face alight with reverent obedience. _Here_ was a Gelfling that wouldn't turn, didn't have the brains to. She was glad to be alive, scraping and serving for her Lord.

After grunting to the girl to prepare the flesh for eating skekMal strode to the cabin where he'd left the Grottan, a restraining rope knotted tight about her throat. He was too tired for her frantic wildness, deciding before he'd even wrenched the door open that he'd knock her out cold at the first flicker of it. But what he saw in the room was beyond the slave's new feral rage, or anything he'd ever seen in her before. He growled in the back of his throat, throwing the door shut behind him, and for a moment skekMal saw something of that old, raw terror shift in the girl's scarred face.

"The _fuck_ have you done, Grottan?" snapped the Hunter. "Explain. _Now_."

The Grottan, who sat in the corner of the room far from where he'd left her bound to a bed post, shook her head. skekMal's growl snapped into a roar.

"Open your _damned_ mouth, girl. What is it? Some _witchery_ the Dousan freaks taught you?"

The girl didn't answer, but a tight smile hovered at the corner of her lips

"Think what you want. It's just... drawings."

 _Drawings_. Not only had the girl somehow slipped the rope loose from the bed post but she had scrawled in blood on the floor and the walls, symbols and stick figures and trees much as she'd once embroidered into cloth but larger, angrier, the wet smears slashes of hate the Hunter could _feel_ like a heat in the air. It made him think again of Velyn, the Sifa spellstress he'd kept many trine ago and who'd ended herself after having her wings cut away. How similar they were, she and the Grottan, so similar that the tiny feathers on the back of skekMal's neck rose up in tiny points.

"Tell me what you've done or I'll snap your head from your neck," snarled skekMal. "I know that you have no skill with knots. Have you cast some Gelfling curse to unravel the rope?"

The girl scowled, then turned her back to him, her torn wings held awkwardly against her. She mumbled something that skekMal didn't immediately understand, although her bitter tone was unmistakable.

"If I'd learned magic I would have used it to keep you far away from me, wouldn't I?"

The Hunter sneered, casting a disparaging look at the ceiling.

"I would wager that you tried and were no good. Come here. Don't make me fetch you."

The Grottan rose and turned, holding herself so stiffly that she might have been one of the dolls of woven branches some poor Gelfling children played with. She smelled as strongly of blood as the Hunter did, although she with the salt-musk of her own. Her little hands were caked with it, so unlike the finicky creature that had kept herself so busily clean in the forest.

"Filthy little bitch," said the Hunter. "Do you think yourself a Podling now, playing in your own mess?"

"You left me alone for hours," said the girl, flatly. "I had nothing else to do."

And the door had been locked, the Hunter thought, leaving no avenue for escape.

"And its meaning?" skekMal demanded, gesturing to the hideous scrawl. "I did not think you clever enough to write."

The Hunter watched the slave's mouth tighten, that determined look he'd come to be wary of.

"It's _not_ writing. There _are_ no meanings. It's just things I've seen. Things I want. Things I... I'll never have."

"Hmm. I do not believe you."

Swinging out an arm the Hunter dashed the girl against the wall, watching her tiny form instantly crumple into a ball onto the floor. The creature had clearly tired herself as much with her foul etchings as he had with the Hunt; she must have forced her ruined wings open to reach the ceiling, pushing herself beyond the limits skekMal had thought possible.

"You shouldn't be able to fly after what I did to you, girl," he said, sharply. "Where has this strength come from? Got some fat on your bones, now, I see."

At this Leina physically flinched, not with hate or anger but a hurt that skekMal hadn't seen in some time. He grinned; while he wasn't quite the clever wordsmith some of his brethren were the Hunter was sharp enough to pick at a soft spot when he saw one.

"Ahh, pitiful, prideful woman. You do not like me to speak of it. Are you ashamed that you've lost the skill of starving yourself as you did in the woods? Are you losing that resolve of yours?"

He picked the girl up from the floor and tossed her onto the bed. She had her arms wrapped so hard around herself that the tips of her green elbows had gone white with pressure. Her hair, shorn the the root by his sword, stuck up from scalp in disarray.

"I preferred you hungry," said the Hunter. "You will not eat tonight."

"I don't want any kill of yours, anyway," the girl croaked, but she was shaking like a Unamoth still fresh and damp from its chrysalis, and just as feeble.

"Idiot," said the Hunter. "I've watched you suck your own sibling's blood from you fingers as eagerly as you sucked my brothers' cocks for favour. You'll eat at my will, and to the marrow."

The thought of betrayals in the castle of the Crystal raised skekMal's hackles again. As weary as he was the Hunter still had strength to turn the girl onto her front and take her from behind, entering her so quickly that she barely had time to struggle. With his smaller arms skekMal grappled the back of her neck, and with the larger pair he spread her soft arse open, dredging talons through her flesh.

"Another trespass to punish you for," the Hunter grunted. "How many will I remember before you break under me?"

The stink of her blood and filth was so thick in his nostrils that, with the stillness of her, the Hunter might as well have been rutting a corpse. He gripped the girl's waist and huffed as he filled her.

"Kill me," the girl whimpered, as she had when he'd fucked her in the sand. "Just kill me."

"No," said the Hunter, and he thrust a talon into her arse, turning the knuckle until the girl shrieked and writhed at last, the way he liked her. "And long though you lay with the Dousan _you_ are no death-lover. You could have hung yourself with that rope about your neck. Yet you did not."

The girl had no reply to that, and skekMal smirked, knowing he had her in a bind. She didn't fear death any longer, but clearly she had no _desire_ for it, or else too little to act on it alone. On his long hunt before reaching the desert skekMal had wondered from time to time if his servant had found some place to end herself, imagining the disappointment of her scent leading him to a corpse. There was something in her, that mad, fighting spark, that rejected death; why _else_ would she have trained to fight him?

She wasn't like Velyn, who had died in the night like a litter runt. She was his wild dog, his Leina, pathetic pet.

skekMal came within her, relishing the tightness of her small body milking him dry. As he stood he saw the girl flinch and buckle, as though about to be sick. Instead she spoke, her voice dark and ugly.

"You can mock me all you want, talk of knowing me, what I am... I know _you_ , skekMal."

"Oh, _do_ you, Gelfling slattern?" he snapped. "And what is it you think you know so well?"

"I've made you _weak_ ," said the girl, and let out a lunatic shriek of laughter. "What kind of monster keeps a _pet_? _Cares_ for it? Chases it across Thra? You say I'm soft... what about _you_?"

 _This_ , again, the taunt she'd clung to, the only one that had him rattled.

"You test my tolerance, girl," said the Hunter. "First your cack-handed spellwork, now you claim to mean something to me- wishful thought. You still believe Skeksis have hearts, after all you have seen?"

The crazed white eyes, always staring slightly past him rather than at him, lowered for a moment.

"I would take anything of mine back as I've taken you, girl, whether sword or armour. I have told you this before."

Leina shook her head, her mouth a tiny, broken-toothed rictus.

"Deny all you want," said skekMal. "This is not court; you are no consort to a King, as much as you fancy yourself such, tiny dreamer. You would not want that life. Be grateful I have no plan to sell you the Emperor. You saw only the surface of him, and that place."

That said he left her, bored of the girl and her hysterical questioning. As he stalked down the corridor he heard sobs rising from the locked room, raw, angry, miserable.

Such a change from the girl who had once refused to cry.


	13. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina struggles with her imprisonment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is late! I notice your kudos drops, it keeps me motivated <3

Leina wept until her cries shattered into screams, and then screams into laughter, then vomiting, her stomach turning itself onto the bed she'd been abandoned upon. No, not abandoned, _punished_ , isolated, just as she'd been left alone in their camp in the forest with her own thoughts and maddening loneliness. Leina should have been _glad_ to be away from the monster's side, but knowing the inevitability of his return made every minute drag painfully by, like sandpaper across skin.

She knew the door would be locked, and there was no porthole or window of any kind in the room in which to allow light or possibility of escape. Only a chink of daylight seeping under the door allowed Leina to survey the room and plan what to do with her time alone.

Firstly she decided to have a go at the rope binding her neck to the bed; with her hands free she was able to unpluck the knot that skekMal used, a simple one, thank Thra, one of the many dear Hila'an had taught her to unmake. Of course skekMal had been cocky, never considering that the skill of trap-making he'd already imbued into his slave would quicken her learning for such things. Leina had the rope snapping free of the bed in under two minutes, but then again was hit with the hard knowledge that she had nothing to do but think and brood.

She'd done more than enough of that, in her time.

Looking down at the blood on her thighs a thought came to Leina: base, primitive, but satisfying, somehow, as it always was when she did anything the Hunter would not like. Leina daubed the fingers of the hand that hadn't been crushed in her own blood and crawled towards the nearest wall, drawing the first image that came to mind upon it. _Herself_ , falling through a sun-bleached sky, realising that she'd failed again, the trees of the forest that had once been home but had slowly become no more than a trap, the turrets of the castle where she'd sold herself to creatures that hated her...

When the bottom of the wall was full Leina stretched on tiptoe to scrawl further up, then tried her wings, keening as the torn limbs burned at the slightest effort. Still she forced them open, suddenly _needing_ to fill the room with her frustrations, all that sang noisily with the racket of her own weakness. Memories that had throbbed like poisoned wounds in her mind poured out from her fingertips, and as she screamed in pain her wings opened and Leina reached the top of the wall, the ceiling. Sweat coursed down her scarred body until Leina was shaking with exertion.

At last she stopped, having no more blood to mark the walls. Leina had forgotten the shame of the Moon Blood, the pain and tiredness of it- as a girl she'd always scrubbed herself and her clothes clean of it until her fingers were raw, red-cheeked at the mess. Now surrounded by angry little sigils of liquid pink there was no shame left to be found; Leina was _pleased_ with what she'd done, the same grim way she'd been proud of securing clothing and a blade from the Skeksis Lords.

skekMal, when he returning reeking of death and the desert, was not.

He'd fucked her as he always did after a hunt, quickly, roughly, uninterested in torturing pleasure out of her, as he sometimes did, only pain. It didn't help that he was _angry_ at what she'd done, his fearsome gaze swinging about the bloodied room in dislike. Leina had long known that the superstitious old monster had a strong aversion to the Dousan and their religion, but until recently she hadn't known he held the same mistrust of Gelfling magic.

 _Vliyaya_ , it was called, each clan with its own ability- the Sifa in crafting protection charms, for instance, the Silverling Vapran in camouflage. Leina's own adoptive clan had always been a more practical people, prouder of their stead as warriors and crafters than of their magic, few of its members being able to practice. Of the Grottan's _Vliyaya_ she'd learned little; Leina herself had been the only member of her original clan that her mother or indeed any of her peers had ever seen, the scarce knowledge she'd gleaned being no more than jumbled myth and prejudice.

What magic, then, was the _Hunter_ wary of? For there had been genuine rage in his voice as he surveyed the etchings on the walls, as if he truly thought they posed some risk. If Leina learned something of spellwork she could practice it, _hone_ it, use it as she'd been accused of. Perhaps Fr'ou could explain- she might never again take Leina's side, but she might at least glean some knowledge from her. It was cruel to think of using the girl again, but there was no other choice, none at all. This Leina clung to as she buried her head in the mattress and cried, as the Skeksis finished inside her, when he left her alone again.

Left her alone without food and water for two whole days.

Until then Leina hadn't fully appreciated the extent of skekMal's anger. Brutal though he'd been she'd expected _worse_ than had been dealt- although the thought that there _was_ something worse than slaughtering her crew and violating her body made Leina bark out a thin, joyless laugh. Being left for so long without a crumb of sustenance was a cruelty that Leina was unaccustomed to. skekMal had implied that other Gelfling were housed as such in the Castle, but in the forest skekMal kept her at his side or else left her with some means to survive.

But she'd been his pretty little prize, then, and now she was a being lower than that, a rogue servant to be treated as such.

There was nothing in the room besides the bed, almost everything else having been removed before she'd been imprisoned. Thankfully there was a chamber pot under the bed for Leina to relieve herself in, although that quickly filled and she had to crawl to a corner instead. Being used to starving the hunger didn't come for some time, but thirst clawed at the inside of her mouth with dry, papery fingers, until she began to consider supping her on Moon Blood to sate it.

The bed being soiled Leina spent the majority of those days curled up on the floor, quivering with rage and misery at her predicament. The thirst plucked and plucked at her until her tongue felt like a piece of dried leather in her mouth, until her lips cracked and blistered for want of moisture. But the worst of it was when the delusions came.

Leina didn't know what was wrong at first, only that she heard and saw things that weren't there. Small, crawling, shadows, whispers and growls from within the wall, as if there were little creatures living inside them. Gibbering with fear Leina crawled under the bed and hid there, quaking, wondering what manner of demons had taken hold of the ship. She screamed out, throwing away her pride to beg for Fr'oudea or even the Hunter to let her out of the room- but neither came.

Leina heard skekMal pacing the ship often, his death-charms clinking and jangling. He was impatient to return home, away from the desert, as irritated by his confinement as Leina was by hers. He hunted far more than he needed or most likely wanted to, claiming what little respite he could from the expanse of the desert- Leina knew his habits and comforts all too well by now, and the thought of him suffering even mildly gave her joy. She was sure that his keen ears heard her screams of fear and desperation, and so she made herself quiet; she needed to save her strength now, after all.

By the time the cabin door finally flung open at the end of the second day Leina was close to fainting, her weak vision waning even more towards sightlessness. She felt the Hunter's heavy tread on the floorboards, heard his cantankerous growling even before he spoke.

"Come out from hiding, girl, unless you want to die of thirst under that bed. From what I know of you I do not think you do."

Slowly Leina dragged herself out across the floorboards and raised her havy head. The Hunter glared down at her, and even without meeting his eyes she felt his disgust.

"You stink, little wretch. And you look damned uglier than before."

"Leave me alone," Leina rasped.

Something heavy struck the floor by skekMal's feet; a bucket filled with water. The Hunter pulled a wet rag out of it and dangled it close to Leina's face, watching as her dry mouth opened in response.

"Drink."

"Give me the bucket," said Leina, stubbornly, although her tongue and lips were screaming for the moisture. "I won't drink from _your_ hand, animal."

"You will, or I will force it down your ungrateful throat," the Hunter snarled. "Do you want to be left alone another day, witch?"

Leina shook her head miserably. She knew that she wouldn't last another.

"Then come here. You would drink yourself to sickness if I gave you the bucket. I have watched creatures do it before now."

Opening her mouth Leina latched onto the sopping cloth, squeezing water from the fabric with her lips. It felt so good on her parched tongue that her thin body shook even harder.

"There, pup," said skekMal. "You've had enough."

He tried to take the rag away, but Leina held on with her teeth even though it hurt. The Hunter seized her jaw and squeezed until Leina tasted blood, his talons scoring her cheek. She spat out the rag and lay, panting, on the floor, all the energy left in her evaporating.

"Still got enough life in you to give me trouble, I see," said the Hunter. "Good. Then you've got the stomach to eat."

He raised a string of fresh meat, cut from a recent kill, and this time Leina didn't bother to argue. She clawed back up to her knees and snapped the meat from skekMal's hand, ignoring his soft chuckle of satisfaction. There was still blood and gristle coating his talons; Leina stared at it longingly, but couldn't bring herself to lap them clean, although she'd done so many times, before.

"Go on," said skekMal, watching her. "I know you do not want me to beat you. And I will, if you do not take what I offer you."

Closing her eyes Leina allowed the Hunter to roughly pass his fingers through her lips and lapped the wetness away.

 _Raw_. The meat was raw. The way he'd likely eaten it before he'd taken Leina from the woods.

Without thinking she sank her teeth into skekMal's index finger to the knuckle, feeling the flesh pop in her mouth. Snarling, the Hunter seized the bucket from the ground and swung it like a hammer, the metal cracking Leina's chin with a resounding thud. Cold water doused her, making her body convulse in shock, but only when skekMal dropped the bucket and began to withdraw a blade from his side did Leina spit his fingers out and fall back upon the floor.

"You _want_ to be hurt, _don't_ you, whore?" said the Hunter, wrapping his bleeding hand in a piece of fabric from his robes. "Gotten a taste for it."

"No," said Leina, clutching her throbbing chin. "I just... I refuse to be your dog, like I was before. I won't do it."

"You forget who is at stake," the Skeksis replied, his eyes thinning to slits. "How quick your mother slips from your mind. You _want_ my hands on you. You know no different."

Leina felt herself stiffen. She opened her mouth to protest again, but skekMal jerked forward, his massive form impossibly fast, and picked her up by the nape of her neck, her wet body squirming against him.

"I tire of seeing your flesh," said skekMal. "You will dress, and stay at my side. I do not trust what goes on in that head of yours when you are alone."


	14. His Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal reflects on his creature

The time alone had done the girl good, skekMal thought. Vicious and feral she still was, true enough, but now he had released her, thin and hungry and addled with thirst she cleaved to his side like the pet he'd forced her to become, preferring even a beast like him to the loneliness of the room he'd left her in. Snap at him she might with words and teeth alike, yet her defiance was tempered, wary of condemning her mother to death as he had threatened. The Hunter had done well to spare the hag rather than slaughter her; what a precious tool the life of one Stonewood bitch had proved to be.

skekMal had allowed Leina to dress- some hideous Dousan garment, stinking of herbs and the unfamiliar -then immediately ignored her, only watching from the corner of his eye to ascertain that she followed at his heel without trying any of her devilish tricks. She seemed to be behaving, whether out of exhaustion or fear or both skekMal was uncertain. As long as she didn't make herself a problem rather than a pleasant distraction in the quiet hours he cared little what motivated the girl. It would be a shame to put her down, that was all, but he'd done it before, many a time.

Up and down the ship skekMal paced, the scowling Leina skulking behind. The Dousan girl had told him it would be just over a week until the _Talusa_ approached the border between the Crystal Sea and the Endless Forest, weather willing, but even this short time seemed irritatingly long and arduous. The confines of the boat made the Hunter feel almost neutered, unable to pursue his usual habits and routines. If hunting hadn't been so good he might have torn the Dousan slut apart for sport, but as grudging as skekMal was to admit it she was necessary for navigation and, thus, must remain untouched.

Perhaps when the journey was done he would kill her. Then, cursed or not, he would eat of flesh, take into his belly the girl who had lain with his woman. Damn her naivety, damn her good fucking intentions. The Hunter would enjoy the yowls of fear from her throat as he ripped her long, slender body into quarters and scattered her bones to the raking winds.

The look on Leina's face would be worth any bad luck that came of swallowing the meat of a death-worshipper; the betrayer couldn't be punished enough.

skekMal was impressed by how hard Leina had become despite her new penchant for tears and screams, shrugging off every injury in favour of flat-eyed hatred. It was difficult to recall how or why an easy, passive servant had ever satisfied him; the Hunter had gotten such a taste for that mad loathing that he had to question whether he'd ever tolerate such again without tiring quickly of it. If she stopped resisting, if she became a dull, speechless shell- then he would end her, open her small chest in the forest, in the place he had destroyed her soul.

But until then she would live, a resentful hole to empty himself within.

There still lay ahead of him the question of what to do with skekSil and skekEkt, the conniving bastards. Perhaps he should brutalise something of theirs they covetted, tear it asunder before their eyes. Grievously wounding the Skeksis themselves was not something the Emperor would allow; fool though skekSo could be at times the Hunter was loyal to him above any other, and would not cross him for the sake of a Gelfling whore. Already the girl had been given too much importance in too many people's eyes.

This was a thought that bothered the Hunter, although not being a deep intellectual thinker he cast the doubt aside as quickly as it came to him. He didn't like how many assumed Leina meant something to him, as if she were some pretty forest bride. Her value was as an object, not a being; skekMal had no regards for her feelings, her comfort, her dreams or desires. He extended enough thought to keep her healthy and breathing, that was all.

But there was enough untruth to that to make the Hunter uncomfortable. Her little mind had entertained him, at times, full as it was with songs and stories and stupid notions that filled the quiet and staved off the prickling, superstitious fear of death that all Skeksis felt in their bellies. No, not quite _death_ , but the weakness of losing himself within it- Leina and her untameable ways was as good as the hunt in forcing such fears from skekMal's mind. Her loudness, her damned struggling, her foul little mouth-

skekMal ceased pacing the ship to look down at the Gelfling, who was so worn from lack of food and water and overexercise that she was on her hands and knees, wheezing hoarsely. Bloody drool hung from her wet mouth but her eyes, raised to him, were like broken stars, white and seething.

The Hunter felt his cocks stirring at the sight of them. Yes, he wanted the girl still, wanted her badly. No Gelfling besides the Sandmaster had come even close to earning skekMal's respect, but as much as Leina disgusted him there was value in the small, raging beast, a coarsing flame of life. It had long been skekMal's private religious belief that life essence could be drawn from devouring a kill; perhaps this Gelfling was one he could sup power from while she still lived, like a conduit.

Like the Crystal.

"Follow, whore," snapped the Hunter, kicking at the girl as he turned to resume pacing again. "I want air. This fucking boat is like a Fizzgig burrow. I do not know how these Dousan creatures live here and not run mad from it."

"I can't walk any more," said the girl.

Her skin looked almost grey, and the Hunter recalled that she was still in season, her weak woman's body frailer than ever on top of her starving.

"Useless cur," skekMal muttered.

He reached down and plucked the girl up by the collar of her dress, soaked through to the skin with sweat. She smelled bad, sickness and poor hygiene- stinks that, once, had been nothing to a monster that gutted other beasts and relished with the foulness of death. Now he missed the sweetness of the forest and the wind on her, even the alcoholic fumes of grog on her lips.

_The grog._

Remembering how Leina had plied him with drink to flee him rekindled skekMal's anger again. Where had this stupid sentimentality come from? Had he forgotten this little snake had plunged a knife in his chest and wished him dead?

The Hunter tightened his hand on the girl's throat until her white eyes rolled. He wouldn't let his desire for the Grottan female become his weakness, nor his blindspot. He'd be as rough-handed with her as her frailness could handle, and make her crave it. Already he suspected she'd at least grown accostomed to his beatings, acquiring a taste for it as one might a gamey meat. From now on he'd have her plead for his hands on her, her sweet, hateful voice getting him hard.

He carried her dead weight up to the deck of he ship and tossed her to the boards, watching the Dousan woman twitch from steering to look down at the crumpled body before quickly turning away again.

"You learn fast, Dousan," said the Hunter.

The girl didn't reply, but her ears drooped low, the way Leina's did when she was ashamed.


	15. Blue Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dousan Fr'oudea begins to lose her faith in the Lords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm back guys!!! 
> 
> The next chapter should be the last before the return to the forest, and a lot will be be happening. Considering this story started out as a dark erotic one shot I've really enjoyed turning it into a character piece just as much. My favorite thing about AOR was seeing the 'human' sides of the Skeksis, so it's been so fun and cathartic unearthing the intricacies of skekMal, who we only got one layer of in the show.

Fr'oudea was having treasonous thoughts again, thoughts that Lord skekMal would have executed her for, had he known them. The Dousan's skin crept, feeling the animal heat of the Skeksis as he moved tirelessly back and the forth across the ship's deck. He didn't like Fr'ou; she'd accepted that. Even if she'd been of another clan skekMal's jealousy had made her his enemy.

It was all at such odds with the humility Fr'ou had been taught that the Skeksis possessed. It was said that they weren't even capable of such negative emotions, most of which were seen as fallacies of Gelflingkind. Any brutal acts the Lords carried out were viewed as righteous, _rightful_ \- but little by little Fr'oudea was beginning to admit to herself that this was not so. It agonised her to do so, filling her with a panicking, spiralling sense of loss, as if losing her grip on a cliff's edge and plunging into the black unknown.

Now she'd started to see the reality of her situation she couldn't stop. skekMal's intentions towards Leina were bereft of the purity of justice; it was cruelty for cruelty's sake, for _pleasure's_ sake. _This_ was what Leina had run away from, not her duties.

From the corner of her eye Fr'ou watched the Grottan stir, scraping herself upright from the deck with arms as thin and brittle as tinder. She was so unlike a Gelfing now that she might have been some other species entirely, one that fought and scratched for survival deep underground. A strange irony, considering that was how most tribes believed the Grottan clan lived, but not Merce- not Leina. Even when she'd come to the desert, travel-worn and twitching with fear, there had been something residually soft and innocent about her.

But no more.

It hurt Fr'ou to see Leina scarred and starved and tear-stained. It hurt to think that _she_ , Fr'ou, had caused this, betrayed Leina when they'd had a chance to flee this life together. And for _what_? The favour of a Lord who despised her, who'd held her over the viscious teeth of a hunting trap for the crime of being in love. As treachorous as it was to doubt skekMal it went even further against Fr'ou's own values to stand by and watch him delight in Leina's torture. He didn't see Leina as a _person_ , not as Fr'ou did. As far as she could tell Leina was no more than an erotic plaything; the fact he hadn't killed her outright as he had Fr'oudea's family was proof enough of that.

As she streered the ship across the sands Fr'oudea rememeberd what she'd once said to Rek'yr about Leina's fate, how she almost wished that she could go against the principles of Dousan faith to save her. Where had that passionate claim fallen to? What had she _done_? What had Fr'ou _become_ , throwing the woman she loved into the den of a monster? Leina had done the same, it was true, but not intentionally; besides, she had meant to leave, to keep them all safe.

It was then that Fr'ou began to hate herself, to understand why Leina had been so very broken, all along.

"Dousan," said skekMal, his vicious growl cutting through the fog of Fr'ou's thoughts. "Watch the girl. If she takes flight or makes any other move to escape me I'll cut your throat."

"Yes, my Lord," Fr'ou whispered.

In spite of herself she worshipped and obeyed him still, this great monster. Fr'ou shuddered as he went below deck, knowing from his routine that he would pace for hours until returning for Leina again. Only now did she risk looking at the Grottan properly, taking in the filth that coated her sallow skin, the scars healing badly across her face, a few looking ready to turn bad. Leina, apparently feeling her gaze, turned towards Fr'ou, moving slowly and with obvious exhaustion.

"Fr'oudea," she rasped, hoarsely. "I want to ask you about something."

Fr'ou, adjusting the _Talusa's_ sails, didn't immeditely reply. She didn't dare.

"It's not about _us_ ," said Leina. "It's... it's about magic."

" _Magic_ ," Fr'oudea echoed.

She kept her voice low, just loud enough to be heard over the roaring winds but too soft for Lord skekMal to pick up below deck.

"You mean... _Vliyaya_? The flame of the blue fire. Gelfling magic."

"Yes," Leina said, her good ear pricking up hopefully. "Could you... could you tell me about it? I don't know much. Not about my own, anyway."

Fr'ou felt a sudden dart of fear, sharp and cutting inside her.

"You want to use it against our Lord."

"I didn't say that. I just want to _understand_ it, that's all. That's not a crime, is it?"

But there was a grim smile on Leina's dry lips, and Fr'oudea realised how little she knew the girl, her true self, or what she was capable of.

"Nobody knows much about the Grottan clan, Merce. I mean..."

Taking a breath Fr'oudea forced herself to answer.

"The Grottan clan is such a mystery. So far away, cut off from the rest of Thra. I suppose that's why people make so many cruel assumptions- everyone fears what they don't know. If you want to get in touch with your _Vliyaya_ it's something you'll have to do on your own."

"How?"

It had been a long time since Fr'ou had seen this passion for learning in Leina, the same drive that had compelled her to train with Hila'an.

"Well," said Fr'oudea. "I don't know that, either. It's not easy to learn alone. I suppose with meditation, by instinct. I can't tell you how, or what you'll find. I wish I could. I... I'm so sorry."

Leina nodded, her throat squeezing at she swallowed.

"It's okay. That's what I thought, anyway."

The Grottan closed her eyes and sat quietly, her only movement the twitching of a muscle in her temple.

"Merce? Leina?"

The girl didn't answer. She was, Fr'ou realised, trying to meditate, the way they had from time to time in their cabin together when sleep wouldn't come. But Leina often said there was no way to quiet her churning thoughts, to find peace, and sure enough her eyes soon opened again and she threw herself down on the deck in defeat.

*

It was two days later when skekMal requested- no, _commanded_ that Fr'ou accompany him on a hunt again, this time bringing Leina with him. The Grottan neither protested nor complained, her shorn head lowered. She'd kept her silence since the brief discussion of magic, and Fr'oudea suspected that her quiet was the result of the girl trying to find enough peace within herself to touch the blue heat of her hidden _Vliyaya_.

It worried Fr'ou. If Leina didn't succeed the misery of the loss or the effort of attempting it so intensely could harm her, but Fr'ou knew Leina's stubbornness enough to be certain that nothing short of death would stop her now. She walked behind her Master, eyes narrowed against the howling winds, and barely flinched as he forced a blade into her hand.

"You remember the Arathim?" said skekMal.

"Yes," said Leina, dully.

"Then you know what I want from you. I smell Rakkida North of here. You will walk ahead, lure the beast down into the trap set beneath that cliff."

"My Lord," cried Fr'oudea, in alarm, but the Lord gave her such an ugly look through his mask that she fell silent, watching at Leina trotted forward across the sand. Even with the training she'd taken from Hila'an Leina was surely too small to fend off a fearsome carnivore. And if the Hunter didn't reach her in time-

The familiar snarls of a Rakkida came ripping through the night, and skekMal quickly reatreated out of sight, grunting for Fr'ou to follow. She didn't like to be so close to the Lord, remembering the terror of him yanking her off her feet and shaking her like a child's doll. Even crouching he towered over her, his jaws gleaming with drool.

Helpless, Fr'ou stared on as Leina twisted around, her damaged wings trailing the air, her sword hand jutting up towards the Rakkida. Her half-blind eyes gazed at some vague point ahead of her, useless in the dark. By sound and by muscle memory she fenced and circled the beast, repeating steps Fr'ou had seen her practice with Hila'an again and again and again. She moved with the dirty grace of a mercenary, drawing in her target, batting it away with the blade.

Unlike skekMal the Rakkida was only a dumb beast, and clearly alarmed that such frail prey was fighting back. Letting out a howl of confused anger it pounced at Leina with its full weight, meaning to take her whether the blade cut it or not. The Grottan fell to the sand and rolled; when the Rakkida landed it struck not her but the trap, a flimsy board set over a pit in the sand. It fell into the hole, limbs flailing, vestigial wings flapping hopelessly.

"Clever little pet," skekMal muttered. "Your Gelfling tricks may be of use, after all."

He started forward, swords drawn to take his kill, but as he did so Leina was getting back up onto her feet and kneeling over the pit, her own blade swinging. An almost metallic scream whooped up from Rakkida and blood burst out of the hole in a red arc, soaking Leina from head to foot. Fr'ou heard herself gasp in a mix of horror and admiration. At last here was the little killer skekMal had spoken of, spitting gore at the Skeksis' feet as he strode towards her.

"What is this game, cunt?" the Hunter snarled. "Did I give you the word to finish it?"

"No," said Leina.

Her expression had changed, the concentrated blankness giving way to terror and revulsion.

"No," skekMal repeated. "I did not."

He ripped the bloodied sword from Leina's hand and pushed the tip of it into her open mouth.

"If you're so keen for blood then you'll clean my blade."

The sword slid past Leina's lips, into her throat, and Fr'oudea moaned, half-sure the Hunter would drive it forward and kill her. Then, as Leina's pale eyes met skekMal's, there came another fear, that the Grotton would impale her own head on the weapon with the same suicidal madness Fr'ou had seen when the Skeksis first returned for her. Thankfully the girl remained still as skekMal jerked the blade back again, leaving a trail of blood across her tongue.

"My Lord," said Fr'oudea, tentatively. "My Lord, I..."

"Keep out of my business," the Hunter growled.

He opened his breeches, motioning for the Grottan to kneel. Until this point Fr'ou hadn't been close enough to the Lord to see his phallus in any detail, and it shocked her to see that he had three of them, organs swelled and knotted with the same gnarled skin as the backs of his hands.

"You have taken to my lessons too well, girl. Time to remind yourself where your place is. I am the Hunter. You are the lure."

Fr'oudea wanted to look away, but again she found herself hypnotised by the scene, the fearsome Lord with his hanging ornaments and mask of death and the bloodied-Gelfling, facing one another as the night winds howled about them. As palpable as their hatred was Fr'ou sensed, too, that curious affinity they had, these two creatures so different from their kin. It wasn't love between them, nor affection, but familiarity, as a weapon knows its sheathe, or a dog its muzzle.

Fr'oudea understood why, then, Leina got on her knees and took the Lord's cock into her mouth, why the monster tangled a cruel hand into her barbed hair and grinned behind his mask. Why they maintained this violent dance rather than killing one another, as Leina had so strongly feared they would.

Until Thra decided to unbind the fate of these two beings they would remain at one another's sides, at each other's throats: the blue flame in Fr'ou's soul sang it so.


	16. The Sound Of A Colour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal draws on another memory. The crew of the Talusa encounter a stranger

The Endless Forest was a day's journey away, and already the Hunter could smell the trees and damp earth on the desert winds. He was glad of it, being so weary of the Crystal Sea and the cursed Dousan ship that even the few weeks standing between him and his territories felt like a hundred trine. Leina, too, seemed to feel the closeness of the woods, although she had none of skekMal's sharply honed senses to account to for it. She had spent the past week hunched, quiet and pensive, at the prow of the ship, legs crossed, eyes closed against the the sun.

She moved only to piss or shit, to open her legs for skekMal, or to take food or water, which he continued to give her from his hand like a dog, keeping her dependent upon him. Claiming his kill in the desert had been Leina's last slight against him; since then she'd fallen to speechless obedience, speaking only when the Hunter barked a question at her. It wasn't _true_ submission; he felt her writhing dislike, still, hot and steaming like innards spilled to the open air. Nor did the Hunter think that she'd given in purely to save her mother's hide. Love for the hag hadn't stopped her struggling, before.

There was _another_ reason that Leina was silent, unlike herself, the mouthy little bitch. Over many trine skekMal had learned that any aberrant behaviour in prey animals was _bad_ , and usually dangerous. The usual causes were sickness, madness, or conscious cunning, all three of which afflicted the Grottan in equal measure. skekMal would have beaten it out of her had she given him reason to, but she had not, was too clever to. Still, he'd beaten her for less, and as he eyed the back of her still, shorn head the Hunter considered lamming her for the mere crime of rattling him.

It made him think of the day he'd taken her, how after he used her cunt and made her beg the girl had crouched, soundless, in the firelight, her half-blind eyes the white heat of metal in a forge. The Hunter should have known that she was different, then; most Gelflings were bilious, weak creatures, lacking the stomach to look at him with anything other than fearful reverence. Even their fiercest warriors were no match for skekMal, man or woman or any other. The closest any had come to matching Leina's spirit was a Drenchen Princess skekMal had fucked once, over three hundred trine ago. He didn't visit the Sog much on accounts of the terrain being almost as accursed and treachorous as the Crystal Sea, but on one of his few ventures there he'd overheard a fisherman gossiping about one of the Maudra's daughters as he passed skekMal's hiding place.

Princess Tofana (this was her name, although skekMal did not know it) was the third born of five Drenchen queenlings, although far more remarkable than any middle child had right to be. She was known to sail and spear fish at night alone, the fisherman said, one of her few escapes from royal life. Listening to this snippet of knowledge skekMal had chuckled inwardly, thinking he quite fancied the flesh of a woman who might had been Maudra, one day, had she not crossed his path. He wondered what her cunt would be like, whether it would be softer and tighter than her subjects', whether her screams would sound as sweet. The Hunter had lain low for hours, disguised by shallow water and hanging plants until, at last, the Princess came gliding through the swamp, her oar stirring the marsh around her.

She was an unusual beauty, taller than most Gelfling tended to be, her features long and fine and sharp. Her wits had been sharper still, nostrils keenly flaring as she aimed her spear at the water. As her boat neared skekMal she dropped her spear and took a fish-gutting knife to hand, sensing his presence but having no clear awareness of where he was. As she turned her head this way and that skekMal ducked under the water and overturned the boat, forcing the Princess underwater. She might well have outswam him had he not tangled nets in the shallows beneath the surface.

Each lash of fin or limb wound tendrils of rope fast around her- just as Leina would entangle the Hunter, in time, the fug of drink making him miss the signs of a trap, how the _fuck_ had he forgotten that night in the marsh? But still Princess Tofana fought as skekMal dragged her bound body into the shallows, her knife hand jabbing, her teeth gnashing, never seeming to tire.

"Who are you? _What_ are you?" she'd asked him. "Speak to me, monster!"

The Hunter hadn't answered. He'd wanted her terror strong and confused and overwhelmed, as if he were a faceless ghoul summoned from the spirit world. When the knife was twisted from Tofana's grip skekMal clapped a palm full of mud across the Princess's eyes and mouth, blinding her, choking her, relishing the stink of filth and algae as he took his fill of her cunt. Her breath and screams hacked up from her lungs, gargling and incoherent, sounding exactly the same as every other female's as they'd fought beneath him, royal or otherwise. Only the Princess never stopped fighting, not when skekMal turned her on her front to fill her arse, not when he tore at her soft shoulder with his teeth and drank her blood, and that made her better than the others by a long way.

She didn't stop until the net was so tight around her chest that her breasts bulged red through the rope, and her ribcage creaked like the wood of an ancient tree in the wind.

Unlike Leina, Tofana's death _had_ come, and it came _quick_ , blood bubbling between her teeth and gills as the fear went out in her eyes. skekMal had cut one of her fins from her to keep as his trophy and left her corpse in the bog to be eaten by scavenging animals, her family never knowing any different. For days he'd stroked his cock to the memory of her thrashing, the high of conquering the wild marshland and its Princess, only wishing he'd kept her longer. He never knew whether it was the shock or the force of him upon her that had killed her, or both, but his tiny Leina had endured this and more, twice fold.

It as that thought that got him hard again, now, staring at the downy neck of the Grottan as she hunched with her sneaking thoughts at the front of the ship. She was like the grass of the Endless Forest, springing up again no matter how she was flattened.

"Stand up, dog," skekMal snarled, marching past the wincing Dousan to stand behind Leina. "Stand up against the side of the ship and look at the horizon. I want you to remember the woods, where I first fucked you, where I'm taking you back."

The Grottan flinched, but didn't immediately stand, her good ear flicking the air the way it did when she was frightened. Had he struck her from some pretty little daydream, or from a haunting memory? It didn't matter. skekMal merely wanted her up on her feet, obeying him; he was sick of throwing her listless body about, as if she was a puppet on his cock.

"Stand, damn you," barked the Hunter. "On your feet, or I'll make it last so long you burn for days."

Leina stood on trembling legs, her scrappy wings aquiver. With her face turned away from him the Hunter knew even less what possessed that strange mind of hers, but as she pushed her front up against the side of the ship and braced her hands on the edge he found himself aroused and intrigued by it.

skekMal caught her with all four arms at once, one wrenching her right leg up to part her cunt, ready for his shaft, another at her tits, squeezing until the nipples hardened. The other two he had at her throat, squeezing a gasp from the girl as he jerked his hips and filled her tightness in one thrust. She was dry, but he knew the kind of talk that made her slick, as little as she wanted it.

"Good girl," he breathed, driving his cock up high, forcing the girl on tiptoe. "My good little dog. Do as your fucking _Lord_ tells you."

He heard a soft groan of disgust from the Grottan, and further behind him the hitching breaths of the miserable Dousan, forced to observe the spectacle. skekMal ran his tongue across Leina's sweating back and fucked her harder, the girl's chin knocking the side of the boat.

"Please me and you will be rewarded. When I hunt Gelfling again I'll bring you a woman. I'll make it _fuck_ you before I slay it."

The Hunter released a hand from Leina's throat and struck her cheek with it open-handed. A short cry almost like a rough bark emerged from her throat.

"Want that, don't you, Leina? A girl's face in your pretty cunt."

She was wet, then, he _felt_ it, although she tried to edge herself forward, away from him, every muscle as stiff as rock with revulsion. skekMal brought a talon to her clit and rubbed it in harsh circles, determined to bring her to a climax. It had been so many unnum since he'd made her come, and he wanted to feel her tiny body close on him. She was fighting against it, he realised, crouched in that carefully curated place in her mind she'd made to keep herself from going mad. From giving in.

She would not get away so easily.

"Do it, or I'll make you beg for it in front of the girl," said the Hunter.

"Monster," said Leina.

She spoke so softly that he heard her over the wind only by chance. skekMal forced her frail leg higher, staining it until the joint threatened to pop. Every hitch of her tiny body against him made him want her more, every grunt and splutter and cough from her constricted throat driving him into a state of feral ecstasy. He twisted her head sideways so that he could see the snarling misery in the profile of her face.

"Come for me, woman" said the Hunter, roughly.

With a hissing breath she did, the spasms twitching her body like pain. She felt better than the Princess did, better than the Sifan; somehow Leina was _all_ of them in one, like a necromancer dredging souls up from the underbelly of Thra. The Hunter jolted inside her, his seed spilling between their bodies.

For a moment he remained, inhaling sweat and that ever-lingering scent of forest from the nape of Leina's neck. Then he released her, the adrenaline of his release spurring him to take up his routine of pacing the ship. The Grottan girl fell to her hands and knees, her spoiled wings cleaved so flat against her back that it was as if she was drawing them inside herself, away from him.

It was later that day when the _Talusa_ was anchored and skekMal was making his way back up to the deck that he heard Leina's voice, the once soft, gentle tones made rough and ugly with emotion.

"Do you remember, Fr'ou, what you asked me on my first day on this ship?"

"You know that I can't talk to you, Merce," came the nervous reply. "My Lord will not allow it. I've risked enough to help you."

"So just listen, then," the Grottan replied. "I need someone to hear me talk. Not _him_."

skekMal readied himself to seethe up onto the deck but stopped himself, curious about the turn of conversation.

"You asked what I wanted to do with my life, when I was older," said Leina. "And I wanted to laugh because you asked it like we were _younglings_ , not women grown. It was... it was so hopeful, pure, that it hurt to hear it. I never thought much would come of my life, so I didn't bother to plan. Now _he's_ chosen for me... he's chosen _this_... I want to get away. Not just escape, really _go_ to places, explore new cities, new lands, meet people, sing and dance again, then move on, find somewhere else. I think I've said something about it before, but that's what I want. I want it so badly."

The girl's voice broke.

"I wanted to _kill_ myself. I wanted to kill _him_. But I feel something inside me, inside the anger and the fear and all the sadness. I can hear it. I can hear it. There's something more for me, out of touch, if only I-"

This time a pause so long that the Hunter thought she wouldn't speak any more. Then Leina said, "Tell me _you_ can hear it."

"I don't hear anything," said the Dousan, gently. "Just the wind."

"No, no, I really can, I hear... this _sound_ it's like something I've never heard before. It's... blue, like the fire of the blue flame, I hear its _colour_. There's... there's someone here, I swear it."

 _She's gone fucking mad_ , thought skekMal, grimly, but when he emerged onto the deck Fr'oudea was leaning over the side of the ship, staring at something approaching in the near distance.

"What is your noise about, dog?" snapped the Hunter, casting a filthy look at Leina.

She stood with her back against the mast, her hands running her short hair into spines. Her half-blind eyes stared through him with a zeal that spooked him deeply.

"Another ship is approaching, my Lord," said the Dousan bitch, ducking her head in a quick bow. "We... we must meet its captain. They require a toll from each of us to grant safe passage."

"Who _dares_ ask for tithes if they are not Skeksis?" growled the Hunter, unsheathing a sword. "I will kill any who threatens me."

"It... it is not _demanded_ , my Lord," said Fr'oudea, her eyes wild with the fear of offending him. "It is... it is only recommended, in Dousan faith. To avoid bad luck. This ship houses a Witch-Shaman, a soothsayer."

To this the Hunter spat at the ground.

"You Dousan and your wretched magic. I was acquainted with a witch, once. She was a damned meddler. Not to be trusted."

The Grottan, who seemed to have calmed down from her strange turn, was studying skekMal with a look that might have turned into a smirk, had he not been watching her closely.

" _Please_ , my Lord, I beg you not to reject the Witch-Shaman's protection," the Dousan pleaded. "In return for a token she will ward away ill-tidings, and tell something of your future, as well. Her powers are imbued with destiny; what she speaks will come to pass."

"I'm no childling; I do not need shelter any Gelfling crone can give me."

"To ignore her is like turning a cheek to destiny," said the Dousan. "My Lord, you are so close to the forest now. What if a storm came, or something happened to... to your charge?"

The girl's eyes flickered to Leina. The Hunter made his decision.

"Very well. But if she offends me I'll cut her stinking witch head from her neck."

skekMal stalked alongside the Dousan as she guided the three of them towards the other ship, a fearsome, twisted thing like a knot of burned wood. Leina, to whom skekMal had grudgingly returned the eyeglasses, blinked up at the thing, her lips moving soundlessly. The Hunter didn't like bringing her with him, thinking of the bloody sigils she'd daubed upon the walls within the ship, but there seemed no other choice: it was risk her being influenced by Dousan devilry or allow her to fall prey to it.

He beckoned her to his heel, grunting with satisfaction when she obeyed.

"A thousand greetings this night, you three," a voice called out across the sand. "I am Cassra. I finds you well, I trust?"

Emerging from the black ship was an elderly female Dousan, still handsome if not for the rolling white of one eye. She came hobbling across the sands in a swirling of blue robes and hair, her skin tattooed with the same vivid patterns as all her clan. One leg was made of carved wood, a dozen stacked animal faces staring outward as she trotted forwards.

"A thousand greetings in return," said the younger Dousan, glancing nervously at skekMal as she spoke. "Thank Thra that we four are brought together under this sky."

The Hunter growled low in his throat, already tiring of this rigmarole.

"The girl says you require a toll," he said. "Name your price and be on your way."

"In time, my Lord, can't rush these things," said the Witch-Shaman. "I am Cassra, or such is one of many names they calls me. Easiest to pronounce, least likely to be forgotten. And you three I knows already- I saw yous coming, a ways ago."

This skekMal doubted, considering the blighted state of the crone's eye.

"Yes, yes, I knows you all," Witch continued, undetered by the Hunter's scarcely concealed disdain. "Fr'oudea, oprhaned child of the Dousan Clan, with many woes to her name. Lord skekMal the Hunter of the Skeksis court, a creature that relishes death for all but one he saves, like a corked peachberry wine for some summer festival."

Leina turned away, her lips drawing back from her teeth in disgust. The Witch-Shaman raised a hand missing all fingers but two and pointed them directly towards her. Cassra's white eye suddenly struck the Hunter as looking so much like the whore's own that that he felt... not _suspicious_ , but something like it. He felt the ripple of destiny in the air, palpable, unnerving, indecipherable.

He wanted nothing to do with it.

"And then the Grottan of many names," said the Witch. "One from a mother, _Leina_ , 'a torch shining bright of the flame'. One you chose yourself, Merce, 'a merchant', she who sells something to another to survive "

skekMal grinned beneath his mask, smelling the reek of shame on the girl. He knew she'd chosen her name not knowing its meaning, picking a word whose sound was so similar to a leniency she'd craved.

"But what's this?" said the Witch-Shaman, tapping her temple with one of her surviving fingers. "As there is three brothers, as there is three sisters, the _names_ comes to three. You has a third name, Grottan, the name given by the one who birthed you. Does you care to know it?"

"Useless knowledge," spat the Hunter. "The whim of a Gelfling long dead."

"As you knows better than most, my Lord," the Witch retorted. "Let the Grottan choose if she desires it."

Leina, face wet with tears, raised her chin and nodded. The Witch-Shaman put her scrawny hands together into a circle and stared through the hole, as if it were another eye.

"I sees it," said Cassra. "The third name. _Vareja_. 'She who hears the flame'."  
  
  



	17. Three-names

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Witch-Shaman tells three fortunes, and the journey across the Crystal Sea meets its end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pull up a chair, this chapter is a long one!
> 
> Also note: Cassra's accent is a made up inflection, in my head it's something between Yorskshire, Scottish, and the Junkyard Goblin in Labyrinth

_Vareja. She who hears the flame..._

Leina stared at the Witch-Shaman, unsure of what to make of her, or the words she had just spoken. Yet at the same time a part of Leina had been _anticipating_ them; back on the ship she'd known that the witch was coming long before Fr'oudea had noticed her, heard the approach as a vibration that, somehow, _felt blue_.

Never had Leina experienced such a thing before, nor heard of it, either. The shock of it had been like losing her maidenhood, harrowing and cathartic all at once. It had been _meant_ to happen, fated to; why _else_ would her dead parents have given her such a name? But then again, perhaps they'd given it to her only by chance, or as close to chance as destiny would allow.

"Is it... _important_ , my first name?" asked Leina, at last. "Does it... will it change my future?"

"Maybe," said Cassra, narrowing one eye. "And maybes not. Can't say yet. First yous got to pay a toll."

Beside Leina skekMal released an irritable grumble from deep in his chest, and she was struck with the sudden imagining of him slaughtering the witch in a fit of temper before any fortune had been told. Quickly Leina turned and put her hand on the Skeksis' forearm, causing him to jerk in surprise and distrust.

" _Please_ , Hunter, humour her," she murmured. "Remember what Fr'oudea told you. It will bring you luck. And if you don't-"

"I _heard_ what the Dousan slut said," snapped skekMal. "I am not fucking deaf. And don't touch me unless I command you to. Remember your place, little woman."

But for all his snarling Leina felt the monster relax a little, placated by her submissive tone. He liked her touching him, too, Leina thought, although he shunted her away as if her soft fingers revolted him.

"Who first, then?" said Cassra, drawing a circle with her wooden foot in the sand. "One at a time, now; I ain'ts quite good enough to speak for three folks at once. Well."

She paused, sucked her teeth for a moment, then said, "Leasts not so well as you'd understand me."

"How does it work?" asked Leina. "What do we need to do?"

The Witch-Shaman gestured towards the circle she'd drawn in the sand.

"Each of yous gives me something of yours- can be anything, a button, a jewel, a hat, just so longs as it _means_ something to you. Carries a memory or a feeling, or such like. Then yous got my spiritual protection until the three sisters glow full an unnum from now. Ah, and I tells you something of your life ahead of you, and so long as you follow my suggestions it _will_ come to pass."

"And what if we don't?" asked Leina, ignoring Fr'ou's pained, discouraging expression.

Leina didn't much like the idea of blindly following the will of another, even a shaman; she'd done too much of that in the Hunter's keep.

"What if we do whatever we like, choose our _own_ path? My Lord will, I know."

skekMal snorted, but the sound was more amused than angry.

"Well," said Cassra, tapping her few fingers on her chin. "Ain't nothing _stopping_ yous ignoring my tidings. Destiny is like a river, all little wriggling forks going off in their different ways. Yous can take whichever you wants, but many of them paths will end in a bad way. I sees them _all_ , like walls at the end of a tunnel. Suffering. Failure. Death before your time. But if you _listens_ to me you'll see the better outcome. Your choice, little Three-names."

Cassra looked hard at Leina as she said this, her white eye somehow as sharp as the other, clearer one.

"So," said the Witch-Shaman. "Who goes first?"

"I will," said Fr'oudea.

She'd been very quiet since leaving the _Talusa_ , and Leina didn't need magic to understand why. Any future for Fr'ou was likely bleak: her family had been murdered, her God had turned against her, and her lover, her best friend, had used her for her kindness, and now was to travel a whole region away. Fr'oudea's hand quivered as she reached down to unbuckle a leather belt from her waist before dangling it over the circle of sand.

"This is my... my Grandather Hila'an's belt, which he passed on to my mother, and she to me," said Fr'oudea. "I've worn it every day for many trine and never thought... never thought much of until now, but I..."

She closed her eyes, and tears welled under her closed lids. Leina turned away, a black twist of guilt roiling like a live eel in her gullet. It was all the worse having skekMal between them, his masked face glowering.

"Weep for your faithless brethren another day," he said. "I am weary of this talk."

Gulping, Fr'ou let go of the belt and let it fall into the circle. A burst of sapphire flame erupted from the sand, reducing the leather to fine dust in a moment. The Witch-Shaman passed a withered hand through the fire before it went out and studied her palm, as if seeing something new written in the lines.

"Ah," said Cassra. "Yours is a sad story, child; your soul's as broken as your heart. Hads a healthy rebelliousness about you, once, but yous turned your back on that. Look how these lines is tangling- that's your mind, that's your loyalties, that's everything inside you. Who are you _now_ , girl? Who are yous to _become_?"

The Dousan girl shook her head, and the tears that had been welling fell. skekMal hawked up a mouthful of saliva and spat.

"Let me guides you, lost woman," said Cassra, ignoring the Hunter. "Yous got to finds your _own_ purpose. Stop trying to follow others, or make them something they ain't. I sees creation in you. Song. _Poetry_. Take up your Grandfather's past and tell it to your people. Tell your mother and father's, make it history, nots something to forget, nor to mourn. Yous always been quiet, _gentle_ , but you've a temper, too, and spite. Don'ts let it fester. Let it drive you _on_."

Leina watched Fr'oudea try to gather herself, nodding at each of the Witch-Shaman's suggestions.

"There's will be folks who love you," said Cassra. "I sees _that_ for you, too."

"I'm not sure I want it," Fr'ou said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Then she took a shaking breath and said, "Forgive me, Cassra. I... am not ungrateful."

"I know, dear-heart," said the Witch, and she sounded suddenly more motherly than shaman-like. "I don'ts hold your soreness against you. Now, who _next_?"

She raised her head and stared up at the Hunter, her sharp face utterly without fear.

"I knows you don't hold with my beliefs, my Lord, but you'll welcome my blessing on your hunts. What toll wills you pay for it? Or will you turns me away?"

"You Gelfling and your fickle spell work," rumbled the Hunter. "Hold your curses, hag. I have something for your flame."

He reached inside his cloak where many of his death-trophies rattled and produced a splinter of bone. Holding it up to the moonlight he turned to Leina and said, "Remember this, dog?"

"Oh, no. Not _that_."

Leina had known skekMal carried such ghoulish tokens on his person- he'd boasted of plucking the teeth of her parents, and she'd seen a knot of her own white hair amongst the hoarde. But to see the shine of bone so closely, so clearly...

_Oh, how she'd licked her brothers blood from her fingers, how the Hunter had crammed his corpseflesh into her mouth. She'd droolled with hunger, her stomach griping for more of it..._

"Here," said the Hunter. "Eyes on me, woman. Look at me. Leina. _Merce_."

skekMal struck Leina's face, from the right, from the left.

"Whatever your fucking name is. _Wake_."

Leina gasped, the horrific spiral of thoughts finally dwindling away. She wasn't sure whether she'd been on the brink of passing out or about to take a mad turn, or both; either way it was the _Hunter's_ fault for provoking her, and it angered her that he'd do so in front of the witch. Cassra, for her part, observed the proceedings without comment, her eyes cool, indifferent.

"Her brother's bone," said the Hunter, tossing the white flint into the sand circle. "He was weak. I have no need of it."

The blue flame howled upwards again, and Leina thought for a moment that she heard a voice, a boy's, her Tarron's, howling out. A Gelfling's remains weren't meant to be burned; it restrained their soul from joining with Thra and the other dead.

"An unusual toll, that one, my Lord," said Cassra, slipping her hand through the darting fire. "Powerful. Much to be seens through a thing that lived, once."

She shook her hand and examined it, her tongue caught between her teeth.

"Speak quickly, old woman," said skekMal, pacing up and down the sand. "I care little for your chatterings."

"Alright, then. Tetchy, tetchy. Yous found a new pastime, the first to seize a hold of you since you fell in love with the hunt. A plaything that's something _more_."

"That is not soothsaying," sneered the Hunter. "It's using your fucking eyes."

He glared at Leina, as if it was her fault that he was being subjected to examination by the witch.

"Patience, my Lord," chastised the Witch-Shaman. "I've hardly begun. As I says, she's something _more_ than a toy. Has been, and _will_ be, if you keeps her by you. Has your hunts not been _better_ since you took her? Have your days not been _fuller_?"

The Hunter didn't answer, only stalked a restless path up and down.

"You knows it, my Lord, I sees it in you," said Cassra. "You knows she brings you luck, and she lives _long_ , longer than is right. It's why you plans to keep her, why _her_ above another. She is protected by destiny. If she survives then it's sure as sures that you'll _never_ die by Gelfling hand, nor by _any_ creature of Thra. You'll have many glories, my Lord, terrible and tremendous. But if her fire gutters or fails- _tsk_. Your hunts may dry to dust again, and you life mights be cut short; _yous_ will be dust, as well."

"You want me to be _soft_ on her?" said the Hunter, and growled. " _Never_. Not so long as I breathe."

He grinned hideously, and Leina shivered, sensing the trine of agony ahead of her.

"I'll give her the rough, and she will be grateful of it."

"Be as rough as you _likes_ , my Lord, but hark this," said the Witch-Shaman. "Take her life from her and yous will know what it is to be _cursed_. Yous might live three hundred trine more, yes, remain fearsome, aye, but yous would be plagued in them years, and haunted by the thoughts of her. I says you _compromise_ in some manner, whatever that might mean to Skeksis-kind."

"It means _nothing_ ," spat the Hunter, but Leina sensed his disquiet.

She turned her head to hide a smile, knowing well his superstitions and dislike of Gelfling magic. He may not ultimately _obey_ the Witch's desires, but they would weigh on him long, and he would be sleepless with thought of them.

"Well, then, little Three-names," said Cassra, gesturing to Leina with her disfigured hand. "What will _yous_ commit to the flames?"

They all turned to look at her, then, Fr'oudea with half-fearful, half-bitter interest, skekMal with impatience. Leina thought for a moment, then reached up towards her eye-glasses.

" _They_ are not yours to give," snarled the Hunter.

" _Nothing_ I have is mine, then," Leina retorted. "Even my clothes are Dousan."

She flinched as skekMal lunged at her, and was relieved when he only bore his teeth in her face. The gleam of his vicious grin and the lethal quickness of him put an idea in Leina's head, however, and stepping towards the circle she pushed the base of her palm into her mouth and bit until the skin broke under her teeth.

Her blood was _hers_ , hers to give, this time, rather than something for the Hunter to take, to devour-

_her maidenblood, her moon blood, blood he'd cut from her_

-like the blood she'd drawn on the cabin walls, this moment _belonged_ to her.

Pink scythed from Leina's palm, meeting the circle in a blaze of fire so fierce that the heat of it burned a layer of downy hair off Leina's face. The Witch-Shaman whooped in excitement and snatched at it, suddenly animated with glee.

"A _powerful_ toll, sister," she cried, holding her burned hand aloft as if carrying gold. " _Potent_ , even, I'd say."

"Sorcery," hissed the Hunter. " _Another_ fucking witch."

"If you don't wants to be around magic, my Lord, then don't consorts with Gelflings," said Cassra, and guffawed with laughter. "All of us has power. Dids you not know it?"

"I knew. But in most of you it is _weak_."

"Hers _is_ , compared to what it coulds be, my Lord," said Cassra. "Her eyesight's cack, her ears not much better. And I sees here she never grew up around Grottan-kind who could have taughts her a bit or two about their mastery of animals, or of the shadows, but no. _Nothing_. Not a lick of the blue flame, until now."

"Abandon your prattling," the Hunter demanded. "Tell me of her magic."

"A bastard savance. Stunted, too; you should have come into your power trine ago, little Three-names. It might have slepts forever if you didn't wake it. Yous can sense the flame of others, can even touch their minds, with practice. Clairvoyance, they calls it. Hearing thoughts. _Putting_ thoughts where you wants them. Seeing bit-bats of present and future. _And_ it's made you tough, too. Looks after you, the flame does."

"So... so I am a _shaman_ ," Leina whispered.

She felt faint, even though she'd known such a revelation was coming. 

"In a roundabouts way, it seems so," said Cassra. "But you're raw and unlearned, and I ain'ts going to be your teacher. You'll needs focus. You'll needs experience. You'll needs _strength_ , and you ain't gonna have it if you push yourself to sickness. Putter out like a campfire in the rain, it will. It's in your hands to be agreeable, little Three-names. Think on it. Either yous fight your Lord to the bloody end of you, or you makes a kind of peace."

" _Peace_!"

Now it was Leina's turn to flare up in anger. Her elation at hearing of her _Vliyaya_ was sinking fast, swallowed by desperation.

"Can't you see in your hand what he _is_? What he's _done_? And you're _powerful_ , you could _help_ me..."

Leina lurched at the Witch-Shaman, clutching her swrirling robes. The wiry little woman twisted easily out of Leina's grip, shaking her head.

"I've bent fate as far as my powers allow, Leina-Merce-Vareja. I honours my gifts to the three of you, then I musts be on my way."

Fr'oudea moved towards Leina, trying to pull her gently away, but Leina lashed out in all directions, like a beast cornered in a wood. She felt skekMal watching her, plainly weighing up whether to beat her down or enjoy the novelty of her rallying against her own kind.

" _No!"_ Leina shrieked. "I'm tired of this! Fuck your _rules_! I know that you can take me away from all this death! _Help_ me!"

Cassra muttered some incantation, and the door in the black ship behind her opened. She limped towards it, slow now where before she'd been sprightly, as if her spellwork had aged her. Leina ran at her, scuffing through the circle in the sand, and suddenly she felt her screams pushing through her mind as strong as her lungs, a scream as blue as an iris.

**_Help me, Cassra! Come back, you coward, come_ ** _back_ **_!_ **

The Witch-Shaman buckled, her hands flying to grasp her skull as if it agony. She whirled round again, and Fr'oudea gasped aloud.

"Merce, what are you _doing_? You're hurting her! You need to stop this, you need to stop forcing people into your _danger_."

Leina only screamed in reply. She could see the pink blood beading Cassra's face, smell the tang of burning, but she didn't _care_. It enraged her that even the most powerful of Gelflings, one who saw every intimacy of her pain, offered no true solution, no reprieve, when Leina well knew that she _could_. The witch wasn't even afraid of skekMal; only destiny, that rigid, hateful fucking God-

Leina felt the Witch-Shaman pushing her back, setting her mind back where it belonged like a parent correcting an infant.

_**Poor little Three-names. You'll** see **, one day, and you'll** takes **it instead of struggling.**_

"NO!"

Cassra had managed to reach her ship and was edging up inside it. Before the black door could close there was a whistling in the air and the Witch staggered, clutching her throat. The handle of a small dagger emerged from her trachea, and around it pink blood churned and misted the air.

"Knows too damned much, that one," said the Hunter, grimly. "Tell me, Dousan woman, does a Witch's magic outlast their life?"

Fr'oudea, who had both hands clapped over her face in a mixture of shock and terror, sputtered out a 'yes'.

"Good," said skekMal. "Then we have made some profit."

He snatched at Leina as she made to go to the Witch-Shaman's side. Cassra had slid down into the sand, her body twitching violently. She pressed a hand to her throat, seemed to be trying to shift the knife from it with magic, but her ability was already dwindling. Leina, who kicked about in skekMal's grip with spitting fury, heard Cassra's voice in her mind, yet tasted it, somehow, too, like metal in her throat.

_**He woulds have killed me, no matter what I did; I saws it in my hand.** _

_**Then why not give me better advice, better tools to help myself?**_ Leina returned. 

It was strange and unfamiliar, this kind of talking, much harder than Dreamfasting to maintain.

_**I've learned** nothing **from you, Cassra. Why tell me to remain at my rapist's side like a fucking** hound **?**_

_**That's not what I meants for you to do,** _said the Witch-Shaman's inner voice.

The dying woman jerked, and the metal-tasting flame of her whispering grew faint.

_**A gifts, then, since my fire is burning out. Come to me, puts your cut hand to my throat. Taste it on your tongue. Lets my blood be as yours. I'll give you the dregs of my power.** _

Leina quivered.

_**But that's what** he **does. The Hunter.**_

**_There's some sense in it. Come now. Hurry, before I'm gone._ **

Wrenching herself out of skekMal's grip on her scruff Leina wasted no time. She knelt beside the Witch-Shaman, whose wriggling had now almost completely ceased, and plucked the dagger from the witch's throat. Behind her Fr'oudea was bent over, vomiting into the sand, and skekMal was snarling for her to cease, but Leina pushed her face against the flapping cut in Cassra's throat and swallowed warm blood from it, ignoring the way her stomach jumped and her gorge leapt to the back of her tongue.

_**Well done, Vareja,** _the blue voice whispered, and then it was gone, the body beneath Leina's pursed lips a corpse.

She heard skekMal approach from behind, felt him clap her across the back of the head, dashing her aside.

"Give up, bonehead," he said. "She's dead no matter how much air you draw through her throat. Now stay back."

He knelt, collected his dagged, then withdrawing a sword began to hack the cooling body into pieces. Fr'ou uttered a great, shuddering moan and immediately vomited again.

"What are you _doing_ to her?" Leina cried, wiping blood from her mouth. "I thought you didn't eat Dousan."

"I'd be a fool not to devour the flesh of a witch," the beast replied, and grinned. "She saw strength in my future. Borrowed from _her_ bones."

Splitting meat from spine he turned to Fr'ou and snapped, "Settle your guts and take the Grottan back to the ship. Watch her."

There was suspicion in that order, a warning. Leina got to her feet and followed the retching Dousan, thinking she'd better learn to start concealing any magic rather than trying to bring it to the fore.

*

That night the Hunter didn't sleep, only sat at the ship's helm, thinking, and devouring his fill of the witch's meat. He'd made the Dousan sail in the dark, far enough from the empty black ship that he didn't feel oppressed by its shadow; they would be at the boundary between desert and forest by late morning. The Grottan girl slept in a tangle of sheets, deeper than she'd slumbered in some weeks. skekMal didn't like it. He didn't like any of what had transpired that night.

When morning came he woke the girl by beating her senseless with the handle of his blade, taking grim satisfaction in the fear that jumped into her little face. Whatever spell-making the Grottan had in her the Hunter was determined to quash, at least enough that she couldn't turn it against him. He was sure that the old hag had been bluffing anyway, _guessing_ more than she truly saw. But skekMal refused to take chances, not after the little Sifa cunt had almost slipped him by, all those trine ago.

Once the Grottan was curled, coughing blood, in her sheets again the Hunter called up the Dousan bitch to steer them the rest of the way. She looked almost as corpse-like as the witch, her eyes like slates in her head. _Creepy_ , skekMal thought, but then they all were, her kind, were they not?

At long last the sand began to thin and join with earth again. Here the Dousan anchored the ship and announced in her weak little voice that this was as far as she could take them.

"I'll decide that," said skekMal. "You will follow."

Slinging the Grottan over his shoulder he began to climb down the side of the ship, grunting as the Dousan flapped uselessly after him. He bid her walk after him until the first trees came in sight, the smell of leaves and soil carrying towards them so sweetly that even Leina raised her bruised face towards it. The Hunter set her on her feet, watching with a mixture of approbation and misgiving as she managed to remain upright despite the thrashing she'd taken.

"I... I must bid you goodbye," said the Dousan, her eyes lowered. "It has been an honour to serve you, my Lord. I will speak of what transpired on our journey to no one."

"Oh, I know," said the Hunter, and began to draw his blade.

The Dousan uttered a miserable cry and tumbled to her knees, begging for her life. Strange that she'd want it, now she that had nothing, now he was taking her precious fuck away with him.

"skekMal, stop it!" shrieked the Grottan girl, spitting a loose tooth between her cries. "You know what Cassra _said_. All _three_ of us are protected. We're supposed to _live_. If you kill her-"

"You shut your mouth, dog," skekMal commanded, backhanding the girl with a force that sent her spinning. "You think I believe a fucking word that hag spun? Now hush, and settle your ego. You're no witch. You're a bastard childling with a few cheap tricks, and you won't get in my head. Try it. I am not from fucking Thra."

He felt the Grottan staring at him, thought he felt a strange, pressing ache on his skull, as if the girl truly _was_ trying to blunder her way inside. The audacity of it enraged him. Yanking Leina up by the hair he rammed his blade into one doll-like hand and shunted her towards the wailing Dousan.

"I have had enough of your cuntery. Kill her. Repay me for whoring yourself to any who would have you. Prove yourself, murderess."

"No!"

The Grottan was too weak to hold the blade properly, to battle him, but she tried, her little pin-legs folding like hinges beneath her. She was a fucking fighter, he'd give her that, witchcraft or not.

"You test me, childling," said the Hunter.

"I'll do it myself," the Dousan said, in a cracked little scream. "Give me the blade. I'll cut my own throat so that she doesn't have to. I have made too many mistakes. I made the wrong choices. I don't want this life. It's worse than a bad dream."

She meant it, too; he saw it in her eyes. They were vast with madness, but with a stange sort of clarity, too. The Hunter realised that, for the first time, she hadn't said 'my Lord'.

"Enough of this," said the Hunter.

He took his sword back from the spitting Grottan and rounded on the Dousan, hating her, hating the look of desolate, dawning comprehension in her eyes. He would have cut those peepers out had another voice not intruded.

"There has been _enough_ death at your hands, skekMal."

"Sandmaster."

Rek'yr, that meddler. He stood surveying the scene with a grim sadness.

"You intervene in my business," said the Hunter.

"I do," said Rek'yr. "To reiterate my final plea, as your friend. Your servant is returned to you, and you have enacted your vengeance. Let me take Fr'oudea away with me. I will have her drink a Sifa memory draught, forget the events of these past unnum. She will believe her family were taken by animals; is that not so far from the truth?"

Sobbing, Fr'oudea stumbled to her feet and ran to the Sandmaster, clutching at his robes. skekMal, who was long-weary of the Crystal Sea and the entangled dramas that seemed to come with it, snorted grudging assent. Let the idiot take the snivelling bitch from his hands; she wasn't much of a kill.

"Fr'ou..."

Leina was on her knees, calling softly to the Dousan girl. She _said_ nothing more, but the two stared at each other with an intensity skekMal did not like. He hauled Leina upright and spun her around, shoving the tiny, scarred creature towards the forest.

"What have you done to her, my friend?" Rek'yr asked, his soft voice hardened with disgust.

skekMal leered.

"Your soft little heart could not take it."

He turned his back on the desert, and that was the last skekMal would see of it for many trine.  
  



	18. Negotiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina suggests terms to a compromise

Walking through the Endless Forest should have felt like coming home, but although Leina felt relieved by the blissful cool of the woods around her any joy in returning was stained by a hundred memories of servitude. She wondered how many more would pass here, if she'd grow old and wither like a summer flower at the Hunter's side. It seemed unlikely that he'd _want_ her when her youth was gone. But then again, his tastes were not like those of Gelfling: Leina still couldn't understand what beauty he saw in her Grottan features, nor in the many scars he'd put upon her flesh.

She glanced up at him, watching his vast shoulders roll under his cloak. Even after all this time and seeing him more vulnerable than any other living creature had skekMal still frightened Leina with his sheer physicality, his unpredictable nature, as untameable as the wilderness of which he was king. He turned to look at the tangle of leaves and vines swinging above him, and for a moment the narrow of his eyes through his mask made Leina twitch with nervous anticipation. But then as he did nothing but prowl beside her Leina realised that the look she'd seen on his face was contentment, an emotion so pure and simple that Leina was bowled over by it.

"What are you staring at?" said the Hunter, sharply.

Leina jumped, chagrined to have been caught in the act.

"I... well. I was just thinking that you look... _happy_."

"Aye," skekMal replied, tilting his head in amusement. "You've seen me so before, have you not?"

Leina thought of his grim cheer after every hunt, the post-fuck glow of pleasure. She shook her head.

"Not like _this_."

"Things are as I want them to be. That pleases me."

At this Leina had to look away. It disgusted her to think that such an innocent emotion had been brought about by her subjugation, by the dark prophecy and death of a shaman. By the Hunter's oneness with the forest Leina herself had once thought hers. Apparently sensing her mood skekMal blew air through his beak and said, "You would prefer me in a darker mood?"

"No," said Leina. "I just didn't know you _could_ be happy. Not the way Gelflings can be."

The Hunter grunted derisively, but didn't reply. He seemed to forget her presence for a time, immersing himself in the trees, climbing them, leaping back to the ground again, his erratic behaviour so ridiculous for such a large and brutal creature that Leina shook her head. The Hunter stood on two legs again, shaking leaves from his shoulders, and gave Leina a rough shove as he marched ahead of her.

"You think you know all about me, little idiot," said skekMal. "My _kind_. You do not."

"Don't I?" askes Leina, coolly. "I've seen and heard enough to know plenty. Besides, you used to tell me stories-"

"Not of what we were _before_."

"Before what?"

Surprised by the turn of conversation Leina thought over the previous histories skekMal had given her, most little more than tales of war.

"You mean before the Skeksis came to Thra and took over my people."

The Hunter jerked his head.

"Yes. We were not _Skeksis_ then. Other creatures from a faraway world. We were sent away from there- we were dark folk, wicked. Our people didn't like it much. So we travelled. Learned. Taught. Got a taste of power we'd never had on that stinking hole planet we came from."

The anger and resentment in the Hunter's voice was the most raw and genuine Leina had ever heard it. The return to the forest had clearly cracked open thought and emotions the great beast didn't often dwell on, not outwardly, at least. Leina ran to catch up with the Hunter, keen to listen if only to sift for some weakness she could save for a time of need.

"We tried to go back," said the Hunter. "We had cleansed ourselves of our black hearts, or so we thought. Your fucking Crystal was our key to be pure again, return to the same folk who turned us out. But one of us was still a villain. Just one who knew his own soul, when the rest were all the same."

"Who?" pressed Leina.

skekMal rumbled uneasily.

"I do not know. Too long ago. We did not have names. There was no _Hunter_ then, no whimpering Chamberlain. Just one dull Good. One mind. Except for Dark Heart. "

He seemed to relax a little with this memory, as if it comforted him.

"Thank Thra _he_ had sense. The Crystal cracked. Pieces scattered. The creatures we were became halves. Skeksis. urRu. Better that way. Useless tender-hearted shit remained with the urRu, and they stay far from us. Skeksis..."

"The Skeksis are evil," Leina finished.

The Hunter stopped and turned on his heel, glowering.

" _Evil_. That's Gelfling talk. I think for _myself_ , hunt because I can take what is _mine_ , when I _feel_ something it is because I, skekMal, do it, not the hive. Half I might be, but I am more whole now that I ever was when I was One."

He smacked his fist against his chest for emphasis, and scowled again, as if warning Leina away from making another retort.

"I do not need to justify the hunt to you, nor keeping you as my own. You are a crawling flea on this planet, and I am a Lord of two worlds. Accept it."

"Then why are you telling me all this?"

Leina knew that there was a fine line between entertaining the Hunter with conversation and aggravating him, but she couldn't help herself.

"You just want me to do what Cassra said, don't you, Hunter? To roll over on my back and be a good dog. You want me to make your life _easier_ for you."

"And you. _Compromise_ , the witch said. You keep your fire in check, and I'll warm my hands on the flame without putting it out. You have my protection from creatures that would harm you."

"But not from you."

The Hunter flashed her a toothesome smile as cold as his eyes.

"You still have many trine of punishment ahead of you to pay for sticking me with your blade. But I will not kill you as long as you are of use to me and do not give me too much gripe."

Leina clenched her fists, trying to temper her fury and despair.

"So you _believe_ what Cassra said, then. You've changed your tune. Only an hour ago you seemed to think that she was lying."

"Not _lying_. Telling for her own purposes, and only as much as _she_ wanted to. Witches look out for other witches. I doubt her prophecy was meant to favour _me_."

 _Nor Fr'ou_ , thought Leina, miserably. What a future that girl had ahead of her as a Song-Teller, singing the ballads of loved ones she wouldn't remember died on the sword of a Skeksis Lord.

"You want this _compromise_ ," said Leina. "Then... then let's agree to some terms."

"Little politician," the Hunter jeered. "How far you've come from the stupid maiden who did not even know what it was to rut."

 _You and your brothers taught me well,_ Leina thought, but aloud she said, "Will you at _least_ listen? Please?"

She cringed at the childish note in her voice, the plaintive begging of an innocent long gone. The Hunter didn't seem moved by it. He circled her, clearly trying to make her feel small and cowed.

"Any terms you put to me hold no power. You understand that, don't you, girl?"

"Don't you have a code of honour?" Leina asked, desperately. "You have... loyalties. To the other Skeksis. To Rek'yr, he told me you were friends. He's at least _one_ Gelfling you listened to. Why not _me_?"

skekMal jerked out a hand and grasped Leina's chin, shaking it so hard that her head ached.

"You're no _Rek'yr_ , and for all your new pluck now you've found your magic you're no _Aughra_ , either. My respect is _earned_."

"I have!" said Leina, through gritted teeth. "I... I have earned it! I was a worthy hunt, wasn't I?"

"Hmm."

skekMal stared into her face, his eyes darting across her scars. He touched her tattered ear, and Leina knew that he was thinking about the many weeks he'd spent nursing her through that injury as well as the many unnum he'd toiled searching for her.

"Very well," he grumbled. "Name your price."

Leina exhaled the long breath she'd been holding and said, "Firstly, my mother. No matter what you will _not_ touch her again."

The Hunter gave a short laugh.

"A poor bartering tool. Hardly worth my attention."

Ignoring him, Leina took another breath and said, "Secondly, I'll stay with you for only half of each unnum of my life. You will give me the spring and summer to go wherever I want. I'll come back to you for the harvest and the winter."

"Now you ask too much," the Hunter growled, pushing her down into the grass.

"If I asked too _much_ I'd tell you not to touch me," said Leina, uncomfortable beneath the Hunter's pressing weight. "But then I'd be no use to you, would I?"

skekMal's eyes thinned with suspicion.

"Careful, woman. Your tongue will earn you another beating."

He looked genuinely taken aback by her request, and no wonder; Leina's loathing of him was so intense that it pained her to suggest staying by the Hunter voluntarily, even for the briefest stint.

"How could I trust you not to speak of me?" skekMal demanded. "Or use your witchery to make others trust your word?"

There was no true answer Leina could give to that. She set her jaw stubbornly and said, "If you want my promise that I won't attack you or try to run away again then you'll have to trust me. Otherwise, you will _never_ stop watching your back."

"Tough talk," said the Hunter. "You have some gall threatening me, turncoat. Your word is as good as an Arathim's web in the rain."

He stood up, pulling Leina with him.

"I will think on it," he said. "Do not raise your hopes."

There was an amused note to his voice, and Leina knew, then, that there was a chance to persuade him. A slight one, but there, all the same.  
  



	19. Reversal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter inflicts a petty revenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: while Thra has seasonal ninets I understand each trine has its own seasons too- that's how I'll treat it for the purposes of this tale, at least.

On the bone and crystal deck of the sandship _Talusa_ Fr'oudea and Rek'yr sat together, looking down at the bottle of memory draught resting between them. A cold wind tousled the night, making Fr'ou shiver and pull her cloak tighter around her. Even with the low-level magic radiating from within the ship to create warmth she couldn't imagine how Merce and the Hunter had managed to sleep outdoors at night. Then again, they'd _slumbered_ very little, Fr'oudea often being disturbed by the sounds of their mating, if the Lord's guttural pleasure and Merce's pained whimpers could be called so.

Rek'yr, hearing Fr'oudea draw a hitching breath, frowned and made a sign to her with his fingers that meant: **_When will you drink?_**

It was a custom of the Dousan clan that they spoke little aloud when alone, communicating more in gestures than spoken words. Fr'oudea was glad that there was no need to talk; she didn't trust her voice not to break.

_I don't want to drink it. Please understand._

**_May I ask why? What good will it do to remember what has happened here? You know that you can tell no-one. Few know that skekMal is the Hunter of legend, nor would they believe it; you will think of his savagery for the rest of your life, and do so alone. Are you prepared for this pain?_ **

_Yes,_ signed Fr'ou. _Aren't we taught to accept things as they are? That's what I plan to do. Besides, if I forget then what I've been through will mean_ nothing _. I'll go back to mindlessly worshipping the Skeksis, like everyone else, and I don't think I can. The other Lords all like_ him _, aren't they? The Hunter?_

**_I do not know._ **

_But you will continue to serve them._

_**Yes. Until I have reason to do otherwise. As should you. They are our leaders. They have given us much, even if some of their methods are harsh.** _

Shaking her head, Fr'ou nudged the bottle of memory draught across the deck with her shoe.

 _No. Worshipping them was a mistake. I will stay silent, even become a_ song teller _, if that's in my future. I've never tried my hand at music. I don't even know if I'll be good at it. But I won't forget the truth. If I have to stick to some predestined path then I at_ least _want to know_ why _I do what I do._

Rek'yr dipped his head.

**_I see. I respect your decision. I will keep my silence, also._ **

He picked up the bottle and put it away in his robes. His eyes never left Fr'oudea's face.

 ** _I am sorry for your losses_ ,** he signed. _**That your part to play in destiny has been painful to you. It will pass. Thra heals all wounds.**_

Fr'oudea laughed out loud, then covered her mouth, horrified by the ugly sound. One-handed, she signed, _Life is cruel. Funny how I never knew it before. Why is it that most of us are like crawlies running over the hand of someone bigger and more important? Even poor Merce- her magic is a gift to Lord skekMal, not herself. And it seemed to come from_ nothing _, from_ nowhere _. She_ had _no power. She was just a girl, like me, and that's what I_ liked _about her. But when_ he _came for her-_

_**Many Gelflings' strongest Vliyaya only surfaces during some great upheaval. It is not unknown. Perhaps if the circumstances were not so aligned she might never have come into her powers.** _

_That's what the Witch-Shaman said. But for all this talk of many forks in destiny I sometimes feel that there is just_ one _path, and we are all fooled into thinking it is otherwise._

_**It is Thra's will, Fr'oudea. It is not for us to question it. We have done all we can.** _

But even as he signed Rek'yr appeared troubled, uncertain, something he almost never did.

Aloud, Fr'oudea said " _Thra_ does not will this. I think it's the Skeksis, something _they_ have done. A poisoning. I don't know how, but _Merce_ believes it, too. She told me. With her mind. And she'd know better than anyone. She's just not sure exactly _how_."

Fr'oudea shivered again, another tongue of wind licking the back of her neck. 

"And if it _is_ true, then that's why I need to remember everything. Even if I wish I didn't. What I've seen might be of use, some day."

"Then you must be patient," said Rek'yr. "It may be that skekMal's will is his own. Or it may be that his brethren are as _he_ is. Until then you cannot act. Many would already think you treasonous. It is not safe for you to express your opinions publicly, even amongst those you think you can trust."

Raising one trembling hand Fr'oudea signed two final words before turning her back on him to look at the stars: _I know._

*

The Endless Forest was blissfully cool and dark at night, so unlike the strange, howling cold of the Crystal Sea. skekMal stoked the fire more out of habit than any need for warmth, watching the sparks eat at the darkness around him. He had made the girl fetch the rolled-up tent from where he had stowed it in a tree unnum ago and had enjoyed watching her toil to set it up again, admiring the curve of her arse push at the back of her dress as she knelt to knock iron pegs into the ground. Now she was lying on the grass, staring at the stars, the firelight bouncing of her glasses so that her eyes appeared almost to be burning in their sockets.

There was too much going on behind those eyes. She'd _always_ been a wily one, even from the beginning, bestial loathing brewing behind her innocent little face like a nest of Gobblers in the grass. Now there was an arch look about the girl, the arrogance of holding both a weapon and shield inside her. Leina knew she had the Hunter by the balls, alright, making proposals as cleverly as a Skeksis. Half a trine at his side, half a trine away from him- it was a _good_ idea, and that was the worst of it, for there would be times skekMal was too consumed by the hunt to think about a troublesome Gelfling; it was why so few of his pets had lasted long.

If there was some way of guaranteeing she'd keep her trap shut- perhaps the castle lot could do something about it, sprinkling spies in every region; skekEkt and skekSil couldn't deny him that, owing him threefold. Oh, they'd raise an eyebrow over him letting his girl run about free across Thra, but the Hunter would drive it _very_ clear into their thick skulls that she did so _only_ at his behest, and that it was no _holiday_ , either. Perhaps he could stalk the girl, from time to time, make her feel _watched_ , make her look over her shoulder constantly during her months of freedom.

Perhaps he'd take her when he wanted her and leave her bruised and shaking to pick herself up, remembering who _owned_ her, no matter where she fled.

skekMal grinned at that. There were a hundred ways to own this situation, grind Leina's confidence back down the way he liked it- enough to keep him interested, browbeaten enough that she did not forget who her Master was. Then, perhaps, he could make use of her Sight, test its limits. Torture her with it, even; a mind that could bend others to her will would bring prey in as easy as the Hunter's blade cut flesh. How pitifully she'd weep as he made her lure Gelfling to him, her pretty voice gnawing their minds like the teeth of a Rakkida.

Thinking of torments drew skekMal back to the present, to the girl, and all she deserved. All this business of magic and fate had led him astray from his base desire for revenge. The searing degredation of her trapping him had not cooled; if anything it had grown stronger, for _then_ the girl had not known of her abilities, having nothing but her witch's luck and patience and sheer bloody _gall_. skekMal knew the woman well enough by now to gather that it was _humiliation_ , not pain, that would truly punish her.

He recalled her first tears at his mercy, the way she'd begged not to be fucked before skekEkt, the way she'd shuddered and flinched when the Hunter had made her utter petty insults as he filled her.

Trust the Grottan whore to difficult. _Brutality_ was skekMal's way, not the cruel whimsy of the castle, and there were times he missed the days he could smack his pet into cowardice rather than be tricksy about it. But another slow smile slipped beneath skekMal's mask as an idea formed, and after rummaging in his satchel for a moment he turned and tossed a leather flask across the fire at Leina's shoulder.

"Here. Drink. Toast the return to your precious wood."

Leina sat up, rubbing her shoulder, and scowled.

"No, thank you. I don't like it."

"Since when did I care what _you_ like? You'll put that flask to you lips or I'll smash your teeth through with it."

The girl's face blanched, and she did as she was asked, sipping and choking as she always did. It was stronger grog than even skekMal made, being a brew he'd rifled from a Podling he'd slewn on his long hunt for Leina. He'd tried it himself and his mouth had smarted terribly, so he knew exactly the kind of agony the Grottan must be enduring as she forced her way through the flask. As the Hunter watched from the edge of his vision she turned her head discreetly, clearly intending to spit it onto the grass.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," he rumbled.

Again the girl shrunk into herself, her ears flattening. The Hunter could sense her gathering nerves, and guessed she probably knew exactly what was coming. He didn't care. She would drink or she'd get a thrashing, and they both knew she couldn't take another so soon. Even in the dark skekMal could see the bruises marring her face, like warpaint.

For an hour or so Leina continued sipping away, twisting her head wretchedly right and left as if hoping someone would emerge from the trees to help her, but not even _her_ curious fortune stretched so far. Groaning, she stared into the flask and slurred, " _Please_ , Hunter. Don't make me have any more. I feel sick."

"Poor baby," skekMal sneered, and whisked his tail at the fire, sending up more crimson sparks. "Do not expect sympathy from me. My heart is cold."

"The Witch-Shaman said-"

"She said not to _kill_ you, not that you could not drink. I'll do what I want with you, little sorceress, and I want to see you full of grog."

Moaning, Leina drank again, and retched dryly. She looked up at the trees around her, her white eyes settling on nothing, and after a minute or so a cloud of birds rose up out of the canopy, shrieking in agitation, as if a great noise had disturbed them.

She was trying to _speak_ to them, the Hunter realised, the same way she'd spoken to the Witch-Shaman. But with the drink and her sheer, unskilled clumsiness she'd done no more than frighten them away.

After a few more mouthfuls Leina tried to stand, tottering wildly in a semi-circle around the fire. She tried to run for the trees, but skekMal easily seized her by the waist and set her down again, ramming the flask so hard against her mouth that her tiny jaw clicked.

"Finish it," he hissed.

She coughed, sending grog streaming through her nostrils. Then she drank again, this time with angry, defiant slurps, and as she did so she ripped the eyeglasses from her face and tossed them at the fire, missing it by a hair.

"Ugly," she said, her voice thick with drink.

skekMal laughed at that, for he knew that, fearsome as he was, he was _not_. He'd remained fair while his brethen shrivelled into grotesquery, and even this woman who feared and hated him must recognise it.

"You dare call me that, goblin?" he asked. " _You_ , who are a childling's nightmare."

Again the girl tried to stand, stumbling against a treetrunk. She was so drunk that she barely turned her head as skekMal got to his feet and surged towards her, a loop of rope over his arm. He began to bind her between two trees, working quickly, stretching her arms above her head, her legs spread wide, opening her to him. Limp and slurring and angry she was helpless and beautiful, the ropes sawing at her flesh with even her slightest move. Not even the Arathim could have strung her up so well, for although there was no prettiness or artistry to the ropework there _certainly_ was in how it spread the Grottan's cunt to him, wet as a peachberry in the firelight.

"How does it feel, eh, enchantress?" snarled the Hunter, circling her strung-up form. "This is how you left me for dead, only you put a knife in me first. I'll pierce you another way."

He maneuvered through the ropes, between her thighs, delirious with the joy of seeing the bitch so useless, so indignant. She strained her neck trying to look anywhere but him, but skekMal didn't need to see her face to know the heartbroken shame contorting her. He jerked the last of the grog over her, watching it soak her dress and drip in golden streams over her labia. Then without further ceremony he forced himself upon her, making the trees and the ropes creak in protest as he fucked the girl senseless.

The stupid female was too sloshed to form a word, but she shook and whimpered as he rode her taut little body until he finished within her.

Again and again the Hunter fucked her, brutal delight in her predicament keeping him ever-hard and wanting of her holes. He didn't speak much these other times, only had his fill the way he took all things from the forest, hard and coarse and fast. Then he left her hanging for hours, watching as the Brothers rose and the girl's body quaked and shivered with misery. How pretty her green skin looked, picked out in sunlight. How pretty the blood on her thighs looked, and the hatred in her half-closed eyes.

"I'm sorry, my Lord," she whispered. "Please take me down."

"You're not _sorry_ ," said the Hunter, smirking as he took a knife to the ropes. "But you'll remember the price of slighting me."

He laid her in the grass, a-glitter with morning dew, and fucked her again.


	20. The Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina makes contact with a being of the future

Leina sat against a tree, watching the Hunter sharpen his sword for that day's hunt. She kept hoping that he'd slip and cut his hand open, the same way he'd opened _her_ the night before. There wasn't a single part of her body that didn't ache from being strung up in the trees, and Leina was so badly hungover from the grog that even sitting still she wanted desperately to be sick.

Leina's only comfort was knowing that, in her drunken rage, she'd managed to touch the minds of a flock of birds- only _slightly_ , yes, yet done it she had. It hadn't lasted long, however, and would have been little use either way; such miniscule creatures couldn't battle the Hunter, nor were they intelligent enough to send for help. Besides, it was sheer, revolted desperation that had driven her towards the birds, not a call for aid. That, and a hidden, cruel part of her that simply wanted another to feel her suffering, and they'd _felt_ it, alright.

As Leina had probed from one tiny mind to another the screaming pain inside them pushed her out, grating like the howl of a mandrake against her skull. At last she'd given up, the flock tearing gladly free of her. Guilt struck Leina as she remembered how little she'd cared for the birds then and even now, more concerned with her powers than their misery.

She didn't want to be like skekMal, didn't want to think that his influence had tainted her, but it had.

This wasn't the first time Leina had noticed it, nor the second, nor even the _third_. After all, she'd screamed at Fr'oudea, killed on hunts, raked through Cassra's mind to made her bleed, each vicious explosion a catharsis she couldn't deny. It made Leina feel even filthier than the seed within her, and she wished that she could scrub her brain of it as she would her skin.

 _If only Cassra didn't die_ , thought Leina, tiredly. _She understood me. She could have taught me how to use my_ Vlilaya _properly instead of just flailing and lashing out. Maybe I won't_ ever _be able to use it the way she wanted me to._

Leina glared at the Hunter, at his dangling collection of bones. His greed for power repulsed her almost as much as the killing did. It clearly wasn't enough for him to feed on the witch, or to draw energy from the proximity of Leina's own _Vlilaya_ ; skekMal had implied that he and his brethren reaped energy from the Crystal of Truth, a taboo as unspeakable as fucking a corpse.

Leina hadn't had the strength respond when he'd told the story, but thinking of it now made gooseflesh rise up on the backs of her arms. It was no wonder that the world seemed darker since the Hunter had taken her; his entire being was built on death, every cell, every hair, every claw.

How long would the Lords live as a result of their predatory feasting? _Too_ long, Leina sensed, thinking of Cassra, her guarded sympathy. skekMal might indeed have another three hundred trine ahead of him, ninets of slaughtering and fucking, breaking Thra's inhabitants like bones under his sole. Leina stared at the Hunter's vast, hunched shoulders, feeling glad that it was unlikely he'd ever set his sights any higher than the hunt. His disdain for politics kept him away from courtly matters, and besides, skekMal was far too feral to take the throne.

Leina shivered. Put in skekSo's place the Hunter would smash the royal chair into splinters, plunder the Vapran princesses, raze down both palace and castle so that fresh hunting grounds could spring up in their place. She should be glad to be the sole living creature skekMal thought worthy of his court, but she _wasn't_. It was like being the right-hand of a demon, and Leina was losing herself to darkness that might otherwise have turned its gaze to other things.

"Eyes down, harlot," snapped skekMal, staring fiercely at her from across the camp. "I can feel your stare."

"A crawlie can look at a king, Hunter," muttered Leina, under her breath, and moaned, the mere act of opening her mouth churning grog to the back of her throat.

"Eh? A _king_?" the Hunter grunted. "Is that some joke of yours? You talk too fucking much. Want me to hang you from the trees again?"

He touched the coil of rope at his side and Leina flinched, unable to stop herself. She hated the ghoulish satisfaction in skekMal's eyes. The imprints of his teeth and claws were all over her, and Leina's blood still thudded in her eardrums with the fear of what he could do while she was tied so utterly open.

"Do not think this night has put things to right between us," said the Hunter. "It will take more than _that_ to salve the wound you put in me."

"What about mine?" said Leina, softly.

She couldn't help herself. His gloating tone was far too much.

"You took my _family_ from me, Hunter. Think of the debt _you_ owe."

skekMal snickered and got to his feet.

"I pay it by keeping you whole. You'd be less trouble mute and flightless. Don't need your legs either, come to that. Could take them all. But here you are, in one piece, flapping your lips at me like an old nag."

He reached up to adjust the sword at his shoulder, and Leina suppressed a wince.

"You forget how comfortable you are at my side, woman," said skekMal, abruptly. "You eat off my kills. Sleep in my bed. Take pleasure in it "

"I don't _ask_ for any of it."

The Hunter chuckled, the sound, though dark, almost gentle.

"You're _brazen_ , witch. Do you know why I've tolerated your mouth for so long?"

"Because..."

Leina stopped as another wave of sickness took her.

"Because it's _cute_ ," skekMal finished "Even when you played the simpering idiot I saw the spirit in you. You keep up with me better than any of the Gelfling I've fucked. That is the closest you'll come to a compliment from me, Leina."

"I don't _want_ your compliments," said Leina, aghast. "What are you _getting_ at, Hunter?"

"Reminding you where you belong. "

Fully armoured for the hunt, skekMal approached Leina, rope looped over his arm. She refused to struggle as he began to knot her hands together, not wanting to excite him again. Being so close to him made her feel throat feel tight and panicked, the turn of the conversation making her more fearful still.

"I heard you telling your precious Dousan your little dreams," the Hunter growled, his filthy breath steaming her neck. "Want to run off, do you not? Grow your witchery like a fucking flower and travel this world, as if you didn't take death with you wherever you set your blighted foot. You will not be rid of me, girl. You'll know no summer. There's no-one left for you but _me_."

"You're... you're talking about the compromise," said Leina, with dawning understanding. "Are you going to let me go or _not_?"

"Said I'd think on it," growled the Hunter. "I have not had much time for that."

He twisted Leina's arms up above her head, making her yelp in pain.

"Nor will I for many days. I want to hunt long and hard. Won't have time to look at you, let alone think about your childling's demands."

"Then why-"

"Hush."

The Hunter threw Leina to the ground, his strange mood snapping like an icicle.

"Don't speak to me again until ask it of you."

Then he was gone, a swirl of red and black in the trees.

Over the next few days Leina saw almost nothing of him but for the few hours he returned to camp for sleep, eat and to test her bonds. Each time he reeked of blood and adrenalin, and Leina was afraid to look him in the eye, sensing a madness in him quite different from his usual sly cruelty. Returning to the forest had chafed away the meagre civility skekMal's time with Rek'yr had thrust upon him, reviving the slavering beast of the Stonewood clan's stories. Leina understood this was why he avoided her gaze as much as she did his; he was purifying himself of his softness for her.

 _Softness_. What a poor word that was to describe the creature that had taken so much.

Being without her eyeglasses, which skekMal had hidden away, Leina spent those days alone trying to focus her _Vlilaya_ , thinking upon how Cassra had described it.

" _Yous can sense the flame of others, can even touch their minds, with practice. Clairvoyance, they calls it. Hearing thoughts. Putting thoughts where you wants them. Seeing bit-bats of present and future. And it's made you tough, too. Looks after you, the flame does."_

Being too distrustful of her own anger to connect with animals again Leina tried her hand at seeing into the future, meditating as she had aboard the _Talusa_. She imagined hands made out of light outstretched, plucking time from the air like strings. The occasional haunting note came to her- voices, sounds, sobs -but until her fourth day alone she achieved nothing except giving herself a headache.

Something was _missing_ , something that made the magic work. It took hours for Leina to reach the right level of frustration to realise it. The silence and abandonment in her own thoughts began to get to her, and as she squeezed her fists shut and rocked slowly back and forth she felt as if she wanted to scream, but didn't dare. If the Hunter heard her he would be angry, thinking that she was trying to draw someone to her. Instead Leina turned the scream _inwards_ , the sound ripping the darkness behind her eyes open.

Suddenly Leina was somewhere _else_ , not the forest but a room filled with mirrors. In the middle of the chamber stood a beautiful young Vapra woman, pale and scarred, as remote as a distant sea. She stared into the mirror, into Leina's eyes, and as she did so Leina heard the woman's thoughts and plight like music, the most unhappy dirge in the world. Worse were the memories, their dark songs spinning themselves so tight about her own that she lived them all in a moment.

She understood now why skekMal thought that there were worse fates than to be his slave, even if he could not see what Leina did.

It was _the All-Maudra_ that Leina saw, not the current reigning Queen but one of her daughters as she would be as a woman grown. Taken as Leina had once been, perhaps _because_ Leina had been, having given the Skeksis the idea. The Sight didn't reveal _why_ , only that this All-Maudra wasn't the only one. But of all of them she suffered the most, over and over again.

Trapped in her soothsaying Leina felt her weight crushed by half a dozen Skeksis, their fingers and tongues forcing her open the way the Hunter might crack apart the ribcage of his prey. She felt the Emperor within her in a hundred ways, never quite as brutal as skekMal but just as insidious, his touch searing her like the touch of an untameable fire. Leina- or was she the _All-Maudra_ , now, uprooted and rended from all that made her _herself_ -gasped, knowing that if she held on to this connection for too long her mind would fall away like snow dashed off the sole of a boot.

_Please, I need to get away from them. Tell me how to get away. Tell me..._

**_Make them sleep_** , said Leina. **_Or as good as sleeping, if you can, so that they're too slow to follow when you run. That's what I did, on the strongest and fastest of them. Try-_**

And then the porthole into the future was gone, her eyes flicking open to the lush, quiet greenery of the forest again. Leina took a long, rough breath, trying not to dissolve into panic. What was going to happen in the world to embolden the Skeksis to kidnap the All-Maudra? Would they tire of making pets of the Gelfling race and decide to reap them instead, as skekMal had willed they would? Or would the Gelfling realise the truth of their Gods and their exploitation of the Crystal, only for their queen to be taken and destroyed?

There were no definite futures, Leina knew, but if destiny had allowed her to lean forward and brush this one with her Sight then perhaps the many paths aligned closely, like a foetus sheathed from the world by nothing but its caul. Unrest between the two races should have given her joy- Leina wouldn't be the _only_ one to see the Skeksis for what they were, wouldn't be alone in seeing them as monsters -but that moment might be forever away, the trine of waiting driving her mad.

Besides, she couldn't yearn for any future where another woman was brutalised, like her.

Leina lay down on the grass and pressed her face against it in despair. She could never decide whether this life was truly worth living, and the vision of the All-Maudra crushed beneath the hungering flesh of the Lords was tipping her back towards wanting death again. She hadn't had time to consider the horrors of clairvoyance, that she might see the things in this world she deserately ached not to. Wasn't it enough to endure her _own_ hardships? Why did Thra play fate against her again and again?

"Feeling sorry for yourself, eh, woman?"

Leina gasped as skekMal's shadow fell across her. Just looking at his fearsome bulk made her feel trapped and claustrophobic, as the All-Maudra had been, and she couldn't help whimpering as he pulled her up in blood-soaked hands and sawed away her bonds.

"Hunting has been rich. Maybe the shaman was right about you, my little talisman. And you've not tried to flee your ropes. Good girl."

His jovial tone disturbed Leina. She sat quietly as the Hunter unloaded his kills by the fire and shucked off his cloak and armour, then, as an afterthought, dropped his mask into the grass also.

"Bring water from the river and bathe me," he said, lazily. "I am tired and do not want to sit stinking of Buplup guts. Do it without running away and I'll reward you. You know what will happen if you flee."

Leina nodded silently, taking a leather skin to fill down to the riverbank. Once alone she stripped and plunged into the cold water, trying to rinse the feeling of every talon and biting mouth from her body. Then, for a moment, she pushed herself down towards the riverbed and thought about staying there, never emerging again, drawing the pure icewater into her lungs. But as usual her chorus of saviours brought her back-

_Cassra, Fr'oudea, Salys, Hila'an_

-and she surfaced, spitting riverwater and silt into the grass.

When she returned to the camp skekMal looked her up and down, admiring the way her dress clung to her body. Clumsy without her eyeglasses Leina began to wash the gore from his bulk with a damp cloth, all too aware of his hardness against her as she leaned across him.

 _At least I'm not the All-Maudra_ , she thought. _At least it's only_ him _fucking me._

She reached skekMal's face, beginning to gently work her cloth into the grooves around his beak. Leina had rarely touched him like this before, and the leering stare of his eyes so close to hers made her feel faint. She moved as fast as she could, trying to make a quick job of it, but the Hunter had other ideas.

As Leina moved her fingers across his jaw skekMal slammed her forward upon the ground, not even allowing her to draw a breath before he was inside her. Blood and water rained upon her from his body, filling her mouth and nose with the smell of death, and Leina felt suddenly foolish for trying to convince herself that being the Hunter's whore was any easier than being the Emperor's.

When he was done skekMal crouched over her, peering into her face with satisfaction.

"Your _reward_ , girl," he said. "Tomorrow you will go to your village. Trade animal hide for grog. Visit your blessed mother, if you so will it. If you return without betraying me I will consider your bargain."

Stunned, Leina clawed herself upright, trying not to wince as pain shot out between her legs.

"You're serious. What made your change your mind, Hunter?"

"skekOk and skekLach are collecting tithes there. You will do well to avoid them. And anyone they catch whispering of treason will lose their heads. That should keep you in line."

The Hunter bent down to retrieve his mask.

"Do not disappoint me, Leina."

She knew from the threat in his voice that she dared not.  
  



	21. Emerald

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina carries out a task and sees what has become of her mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is very dark, check the tags I've added to the story.

skekMal watched the Grottan prepare to leave for her village, tacking furs and rags together until she looked like an old beggar woman, all her worldly possessions piled on her back. Strange to think that the Hunter of legend was using something _other_ than force to keep a pet at his side; it unnerved him a little, being too close to the idiot mindgames of the Castle fools who lacked the sense to make their brawn their means of dominion.

Besides, both skekMal and the girl knew that Leina had no _true_ choice but to obey him. All this was a distraction, a game, folly to whittle away the impossible reaches of time.

But there _was_ a certain power in making Leina remain of her own free will, and there would be plenty of time to beat submission into her once she was bound by word as well as by force.

"Suppose you'll want these," the Hunter rumbled, dangling the eyeglasses before Leina's misty gaze. "Ask nicely and you can take them."

The girl's face twisted in disdain, but she said, "No. I mean, I'll stand out too much. I'll take a branch and make it into a cane. I'm sure I'll find my way alright that way. It's worked before. "

skekMal sniffed; the Gelfing had a point.

"So be it. Don't go stumbling into my brothers, that's all."

He saw the girl twitch, lowering her head as she picked splinters out of a fallen branch. She was not _half_ so hard as she pretended to be; he smelled her nerves like heat.

"I'm not stupid," the Grottan mumbled. " _They_ won't give me a second glance. Won't even notice me."

"They _might_ ," said the Hunter, curtly. "If you make it your business. Stay away from them. skekOk. skekLach. No trickery."

Leina turned from him, testing the strength of her staff on the ground. Her good ear was almost flat to her skull.

"I don't _want_ anything from them," she said.

Her tone was sullen, and the Hunter bristled at it.

"I want it from your mouth," he said. " _Swear_ you will not approach them."

Another stupid game, this; she wouldn't _dare_ cross him, not now she coveted her magic like a bairn. Still the Hunter felt compelled to hear her pledge loyalty, nettled by the thought of the other Lords having their fill. He'd grown quite jealous, and that angered him. _Thra_ , he'd try to tell himself he didn't like to share a cunt, or that he was tired of his brethren taking liberties behind his back. But there was an unnatural fury in the idea of them taking her, and skekMal saw now how easily he could be humiliated if Leina turned her mind to it.

 _Should have ripped the bowels out of that fucking Dousan girl_ , thought the Hunter. _Rek'yr and witchcraft be damned._

He'd have to see that Leina would never consider fucking anyone but him again; that thought could wait for another time.

" _Leina_ ," said the Hunter, in a soft growl. "Swear it."

He didn't have to strike her for her to stiffen and relent.

"Fine," she said, tiredly. "I promise, Hunter. Not that you believe anything I say."

The Grottan tugged the hood of her rags tighter around her face, so that only her dry lips showed.

"I'll be back before the Sisters rise. Getting your drink will be easy enough, if your _brothers_ don't drain the stock, that is."

"Send your mother my regards on your _visit_ ," said the Hunter, grinning. "Wouldn't do for her to forget me."

A shudder ran throuth Leina's swaddled body, and skekMal knew that she was suppressing a flare of anger, not wanting to foul a chance of getting her own way with him.

"Why didn't you take _her_ , when you fled?" asked the Hunter. "You should have known that I would find her."

"What _difference_ would it have made?" Leina snapped. "No-one can run from you, skekMal."

She made to lurch towards her village, following directions the Hunter had given her, but skekMal stood up and seized her from behind, reeling her in by the tip of a wing.

"I've _told_ you to keep my name off your tongue unless _I_ want it there," he snarled. "And you forgot this, empty-skull. You will not get far without something to trade."

He shoved a sack of animal skins at the Grottan, smirking as she toppled under its weight, then after a pause pushed a small dagger at her as well. Leina accepted it nervously. How huge the tiny weapon looked in her delicate hand, stirring the Hunter as he imagine his cock resting in its place.

"You're _trusting_ me with this?" asked the girl. "Alone?"

"I trust no-one," said the Hunter. "But you'd be a lunatic to try me again so soon."

"But why-"

"Doesn't do well to go unprotected in this forest. Do _not_ lose it."

Nodding curtly the girl tucked the knife away, her fingers nimble where they'd once been so trembling and unsure. It lit a blaze in skekMal to see the change in her, the teachings he'd forced there, and he decided on a whim to take her again. He waited until she looked away before he pounced at her, her fall cushioned by the piled robes and rags around her.

The was something almost Skeksis-like about her dress, her demeanor. He decided then and there that he was going to make her come, that he would make her scream for him. He slammed a hand against her windpipe, forcing her to gasp as another guided one of his cocks into her. She quivered in pain around him, still as accursedly tight as ever. Her breath was quick and angry. skekMal pushed at her throat harder, making her cough, then with another free hand rubbed at the girl's clitoris with the cruel deftness of a creature who had long made torment his playground.

"My brothers could not make you feel this," he snarled at her. "Not that book-loving dolt. Not that pus-infested bitch. Only I."

"I said I promised-"

"Don't care. Want you whimpering like a harlot. Want you craving. You'll be humping my leg for a fuck, in time. Crying for it."

He flicked his thumb against the delicate whorls of her until he felt the Grottan seize, her teeth gritted in an effort to fight off her own pleasure. The Hunter removed his thumb, grinning as a look of miserable need crossed the girl's pretty face. He fucked her rough and slow, guided by the new wetness of it.

"You pant like a dog, woman," skekMal sneered. "Too proud to ask for what you want. Yet you chased me in that woman you fucked. She never made you come like me, did she? Tell."

"No."

The Hunter loved the shame in that single syllable, so small, so hopeless. He buried his masked face in her tiny breasts, almost doubling himself over to do it, opening her robes to their softness. His tongue and teeth on her nipples made her grunt, an unfeminine, primal sound that drove skekMal half-mad. He rubbed her clitoris again, so slowly this time that he felt her hips shiver in need to rise up towards his hand.

"You want me to fuck you," he purred. "Little slut."

"Just get it done," snapped Leina.

The Hunter slowed even more, only the hand at her throat as brutal as before. Each flick of his talon made her squeeze down on his cock. A bead of sweat ran down Leina's face and a sound like a crow's caw escaped her lips. Suddenly she bucked her torso against skekMal's hand, a rough and angry motion that tipped her over the edge before he could take mastery of her. Another grunt escaped her, and skekMal had his own release, spilling deep within her.

As the girl, wobble-legged, got to her feet the Hunter was struck by a sudden thought, a question triggered perhaps by the ferocity of the woman.

"I never found that blade you took when you fled from me. What did you do with it, eh? It was not on that filthy ship. I looked."

The Gelfling, picking the dropped fur and stuck up from the grass, shrugged at him.

"I threw it away. It smelled too much like you."

With that she walked briskly towards the treeline, her branch tapping the grass.

*

 _It feels wrong being apart from him again,_ thought Leina. _Feels like trouble._

She travelled as quickly as she could, trying to think of the positives of this bizarre quest, the joy of seeing Salys again, but SkekMal had tainted that as well, having touched on an uncomfortable truth: Leina hadn't even _considered_ taking her mother with her when she ran all those unnum ago.

Salys, for her part, hadn't _asked_ to come, her plan tailored specifically so that Leina could travel alone. Besides, she'd still quite clearly been clinging to her old loyalties despite what she'd seen, what she'd been _shown_ , and there wouldn't have been time for Leina to break them down completely. But it was precisely _because_ Salys knew what had become of her daughter that Leina hadn't wanted her mother at her side; being held by Salys, looking her in the eye, had been too hard. 

Now Salys had suffered beneath skekMal too Leina wondered if it would be worse, or if that awkwardness would lapse in the face of their shared struggle.

As she walked Leina began to hear distant music, the chattering of jovial voices. She stopped dead, suddenly damp with perspiration. It had been so long since she'd been amongst familiar faces or so many people in general. The thought of the noise and bustle and innocent revelling was sickening in more ways than one. After all, the very Lords her people exalted would happily repay that love by exploiting and making toys of their kind.

Forcing herself to take a breath Leina approached the village, hobbling exaggeratedly for the benefit of any curious eye. She found herself surrounded by laughing faces, coloured banners and streamers hanging from the trees, the smells of cooking and perfumes making her nostrils quiver. People stood in the doorways of their cottages, chatting and singing excitedly as they gathered their tithes. Leina kept her head stooped, trying to remain inconspicuous, but Stonewood clansfolk were sharp to any stranger and a few voices called out to her, mainly Gelfling running small stalls in the street.

"Travelled far to see our great Lords, Ma'am? How about a flagon of meade to sooth that travel-parched throat?"

"Gobbler soup, Nan? It's selling fast!"

Leina waved them all away, growing more and more flustered by the minute. She tried not to rankle knowing how quicky their enthusiasm would dampen if any of them realised she was from the Grottan clan; it was how the _Skeksis_ had taught them to be.

Being unable to make out more than a blur of each stall Leina relied on the calls of each shop holder to identify which was which. Her hearing had always been more reliable than her sight, although- according to Cassra -poor in comparison to most Grottan, whom Leina supposed needed such talents in the dingy underground. She turned this way and that, sweating heavily under her robes, until at last she heard the cry she was seeking and grinned.

"Whooping Jak, missus? It'll blow your socks off!"

Even from this distance Leina could smell the whisky, so acrid that the hairs in her nostrils felt like they were burning. The stuff was notoriously foul-tasting and strong enough to make you fit if you drank too much; skekMal was in for the treat of his life. Lumping the balled-up furs onto her hip she approached the stall, coughing to prepare her throat for mimicking Cassra's voice.

"A barrel, ifs you please, lad," she said. "I'ves an old man at home who drinks like a demon. You can takes this for it, if you wants it."

"What's this, then, missus?" asked the market seller, taking the fur from her and turning it curiously in his hands.

"Rakkida skin. Cut offs a youngster in the Crystal Sea. Very fine."

" _Rakkida_ , you say?"

The stallholder paled, and looked at Leina more closely.

"How did you get it, missus? Not easy to come by, these things."

Leina waved an arm airily.

"I'm old; I knows many folks with curious things about them. Not hard if you makes the right allies."

The sleeve of Leina's robe slipped down her wrist, and the stallholder's eyes rooted to her hand, green as an ivy leaf against her cuff.

"Missus-"

"You hush now," said Leina, sharply. "Don't matter where I comes from, does it? This skin's worth the same either way. Now, my keg, ifs you please."

Muttering uneasily the stallholder pushed one of the stinking barrels towards Leina. As she rolled it away she saw him spit into the grass, and wondered wryly how many of the people she'd grown up around did the same when her back was turned.

Slowly Leina wound her way through the village, trundling the barrel ahead of her with one hand, tapping the ground with her stick with her other. She decided to walk all the way through it rather than simply returning to the outskirts, feeling a strange nostalgia to see this place where she'd never quite felt at home. Compared to the bedroll at the Hunter's side the village was practically _endearing_.

That bitter-sweetness quicky subsided as the celebrations reached a crescendo and Leina stumbled upon the square, so many Gelflings crammed within it that Leina might never have known the Skeksis were there had she not heard their harsh voices, skekOk's high and thin, skekLach's low and rasping.

True panic set Leina's heart rattling, but she made herself walk slowly through the throng, made herself blend in. There was no way the Skeksis could possibly know that she was there, but her mind kept posing ways they might pick her out of the crowd- perhaps they'd shriek, demand to know where her Master was, or have other Gelfling pluck her from the square and whisk her away to be punished. She began to feel sick, and clenching her teeth Leina crept away from the street party to retch dryly in the cover of trees.

There was no way her mother had been amongst those revellers. Leina had watched Salys deal with most tragedies in her life with the same calm melancholy- the loss of her elderly parents when Leina was just a toddler, having eaten spoiled Toad-grass and never recovered, the end of her brief love affair with Tarron's father, a man with more heartbroken women in his wake than hairs on his head. Even the tragedy of losing Tarron, of losing _Leina_ , those things Salys had fought through, thinking Leina's need more than her own.

But all of those events had merely happened _around_ her; the Hunter's attack had been _done_ , punishment, revenge, animal. Who _knew_ what state she'd be in, if she'd even want to see Leina again.

Panting heavily Leina continued to shove the keg of Whooping Jak through the grass. She passed her own little cottage, its windows dirty, droppings from the birds living in the tree it was built into coating the door, and considered going inside, collecting a few possessions. But she was already overloaded as it was, and thus moved on, the outline of Salys' home as welcome as an old friend.

Her back was beginning to ache, so Leina set the barrel in the grass and shed a few of her heavy outer layers of clothing. As she did Leina noticed something carved into a nearby tree- a Gelfling stick-woman and a girl-child, rough sigils Leina knew even before she got close were in her mother's hand. Leina swallowed. It was utterly unlike Salys to mar a tree like this; this drawing was _meant_ to be seen. Leina raised her hand to touch it and realised, too late, that it was a dream-etching.

 _When did she learn to do this?_ Why? _She always said that she_ couldn't _, not well, anyway, she must have been desperate-_

There was something very _wrong_ with the etching. It wasn't like Rek'yr's, clear and concise, nor the fleeting cuts of Leina's glimpse into the future. The message was sheer chaos, Salys' voice disjointed, agonised, the images within quite dark.

" _My daughter my daughter my emerald, from the woods I took you when the smell of your mother's fear was on you, when I heard screams in the woods and didn't dare follow I kept you because I knew they were dead, because I knew that no-one else would have you, because I knew that there was something wrong with me finding you by chance, something like a curse, something I had to do and I never regretted it, I never regretted **you** , I've never wanted you **more** then or now and now, I know I'm alive only to hurt you he would have killed me I saw death in his eyes I saw the bones on him I saw that I was so very small to him and that we all were to the Lords..."_

Leina was shown _herself_ , a squalling infant in her mother's arms, then the black shade of the Hunter in Salys' cottage, his head almost touching the ceiling, his eyes as hungry and unreachable as a myth.

_"I'd hoped some of them were good, still hoped that they were that you were wrong that they loved us loved us, but when the Hunter hurt me I wanted to die wanted to die it would have been better, he made me go back to my life as if he'd never taken from me and I saw the same look in the Gourmand's eyes the way he looked at food the way bad men look at women they cannot have and I don't know if it was always there and I didn't see it or if something in the Lords changed but I was afraid because I knew he was fond of me my baking but I never thought-"_

The Gourmand was leaning over a countertop in the castle kitchens, leering, his jowls wobbling. Salys' flour-covered hands were shaking.

 _"-I was a fool Leina forgive me he asked to have me he asked so many times my ears ached asked in storerooms corridors in my ear in the kitchens and I was polite when I said no I was polite when I wanted to scream and put my head in an oven to be away from him but then he was hurt and he was offended and I gave in because I thought that if I didn't I'd be hung for treason so I let him I let him I thanked him and he never forced me he thought I **liked** it he thought there was nothing wrong with it that was the worst of it-_"

Leina tried to cringe away from seeing, but she saw what Salys did, shelves of foodstuffs in a larder as she was rutted against it, the dark beneath piled robes and hanging gut.

_"-there was nothing I could do my love no one I could tell and I'm dying with what he does because I know there must be so many and I might be the only one but **you** that doesn't pray on my knees in thanks for it, I can't run or the Hunter will take me and if stay he'll use me to harm you and I can't live with what's in my head can't live without you or my boy live for me **live** for me my emerald girl my special one I can't be with you even after I can't stand how it feels to have done what I've done you're so strong and I can't bear it I've got to go I have to be **clean** I have to burn the wound I have to-"_

The dreamfast stopped so suddenly that Leina screamed, grief and horror folding her in two. Gripping her cane she lurched forwards, towards the cottage, or where the cottage had been.

She'd known to expect tragedy, but not so starkly. The cottage and the tree it was built against were charred black husks, the structures still standing only by some miracle. There would be bones in there, somewhere, bones of a woman who would never return to Thra.

Salys had burned the house down with herself still inside.


	22. Cinders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter takes charge of the girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes at the end in case some of you prefer the Death of the Author approach and would like to just let the story speak for itself rather than here my thoughts!

The girl was late in returning from the village, so late that even the little extra time skekMal had allowed to pass had burned away into darkness. Snarling, the Hunter seized up his weapons and set out on the blindling's trail, enraged that she'd been fool enough to disobey him when she _knew_ better. Unless Leina was dead or trapped somewhere he'd have her coughing blood for this slight against him.

 _Enough indulgence,_ the Hunter thought. _She is no wife to you. She is a hound to be trained, and you'll take her in hand and make her cower again. If she will not learn to fear then destroy her._ That _is your way._

After all, skekMal was not like skekSa, who seemed to foster _affection_ for the seafaring Gelfling she voyaged with, or the addled Conqueror, who had one day forgotten the joy he'd taken in breaking and ravaging every species he'd encountered to claim a strange respect for the creatures under Skeksis rule. The Hunter had always seen Gelfling as nothing more than food or fucks or both, and he'd strayed too far from that base thinking in Leina. If it was fate meddling with his brains then destiny, too, would bow beneath him.

This was skekMal's code, and he'd return to it as surely as he had to the Endless Forest.

He tore through the woods on Leina's scent, surprised that she'd apparently kept her word and gone into the village rather than merely treading the outskirts. She'd _meant_ to obey him, then, it seemed- the Hunter caught another, fresher trail, saw Leina's light footprints and a larger, cyndrical mark, breaking through the grass towards the older woman's hovel.

Was the Grottan still there, losing herself in twee conversation? The Hunter gritted his teeth. He'd roust the girl out and beat her all the colours of the night sky in front of the old whore-mother, fuck her as if he was cunt-starved. He'd-

The Hunter stopped, sniffing death in the air. He realised even before he saw the crumbled wreck of the Stonewood wretch's cottage why Leina had remained here so long.

A sly smile crossed skekMal's cruel jaws. If he'd been any of his brothers- the Chamberlain, perhaps, a sore loser -the Hunter might of rued the loss of a bargaining chip, but he did not.

He could see the girl kneeling, blank-faced and shuddering in front of the burned-down house, clutching the dagger he'd given her so hard that her hands were white with pressure. There was a look in her silvery eyes the Hunter had seen in widows when he'd approached them with their husbands' blood on his muzzle, in every animal's before they sank before his blade.

skekMal had thought he'd pushed the girl so far that she had nothing left to fear, but Leina still had her pretty tender heart, so fucking _loving_ , so childishly _devoted_ despite her quickness to exploit others for her own survival. She'd live to regret not guarding her weakness closer, poor stupid hypocrite.

"So you broke your word to cry on the grave of your hag mother," sneered the Hunter. "Death should not shake you anymore, Three-names. I've watched you crawl over a mountain of corpses to keep your head on your neck."

"Did you _know_?" Leina croaked. "Did you _know_ that she killed yourself because of what _you_ did to her?"

A suicide. The Hunter wasn't surprised. Most of his dogs tried, if they lived long enough, and he well remembered the wet spray of his Sifa girl's brains on a rock, the annoyance of having been cheated out of a kill.

"No," said skekMal. "I did _not_ know, or I would have rubbed your nose in her remains."

He saw the girl physically recoil as he advanced on her, and it made him hard. Until now he hadn't realised quite how much he'd missed that cringing terror, the awe of being captured by a God. He saw in Leina's eyes that she was beginning to remember it, that she wasn't invincible, nor had she ever been.

"They both... _burned_ ," said the girl. "Tarron. My Mum. And my Mum- she chose to do it to _herself_. She always said that Gelfling _Vliya_ doesn't return to Thra if we burn after we die-"

"Gelfling prattle," sneered the Hunter. "What does it matter? Dead is _dead_ , girl. There's no peace in it either way."

"You don't _know_ ," said the Grottan in a pitiful scream. "If they're burned- they- they go to some in-between place, _alone_ , forever-"

skekMal felt a sudden understanding of the Grottan's fear, having ran from it all his life and lorded himself above the cold, loathsome reaches of death. But he felt no sympathy, no kinship for the creature in her distress. He saw only the Grottan's degrading weakness, a way to make her fear for her life again.

"Your mother was an idiot as well as a coward," said the Hunter, and reached for the dagger. "Give that to me, dog."

The Grottan pointed it at him, both of her hands shuddering so violently that she couldn't have cut the Hunter even if he'd offered himself to the blade.

"No," said Leina. " _No_. I _won't_ stay with you. I won't."

"Oh, you _won't_?" sneered the Hunter, and struck the Grottan across the face with the handle of his sword. "You have no choice, _slave_. Have you lost sense of what you are to me? I have played with you too long."

The Grottan tried to stand, but failed, the blood pouring down her brow into her eyes disorienting her. skekMal ripped the knife from her fist and put the tip to her throat.

"If you don't obey me I'll cut you to pieces and you will watch as they burn. You have my oath on that."

"No. No. You _can't_ -"

"Do not tell me what I cannot do."

skekMal forced her head towards the burned cottage, enjoying the way Leina's body hitched and shook with horrified grief.

"If you had stayed with me like a good bitch _she_ would have lived. You condemed her."

" _You_ could have left her alone!" the girl shrieked. "You killed her! What you _did_ drove her insane!"

"It was not my hand," said the Hunter. "I showed her _mercy_. I could have opened her like a Nebrie whelp and made bedsheets from her hide."

He twisted the dagger beneath the Grottan's chin, slashing open a shallow wound that made her gasp in pain.

"Do not try to follow your mother's path. I'll find your corpse where it lies and you will know that void you fear."

The Grottan opened her mouth as if to scream again, but only a dehydrated gasp slipped out. Her breathing became suddenly ragged and irregular, as if she was suffocating, and skekMal recognised it as panic. How delicious it was to have this power over the little witch again, rendered so helpless and childlike by her loss.

"Stand up," snapped the Hunter at her. "I will not carry you. You still have legs."

"I- I won't go with you," the girl repeated, and there was rage amongst the fear and sorrow, probably the last hungry thing willing her to live.

skekMal was at her so quickly that his cloak snapped the air like a whip. He carried her to the burned house and laid her down in the ash, bending her arms above her head until her wrists popped.

"I will fuck you here in this death-place," he growled. "And know _this_. It doesn't matter whether you burn or rot in the dirt. You all go to the same place after. Didn't your Dousan friends teach you that? You'll go back to _Thra_ , this world that cursed you with destiny. Better to live and spite it."

"Not _here_!" the girl screamed, as he forced a talon into her tight heat. " _Please_ , Hunter! My Lord-"

skekMal sneered to hear her regress to her old crawling words. He ignored her, stroking his cocks into hardness.

"Wait! _Wait!_ What about the compromise?" the girl cried. "I brought your _fucking_ grog, I did what you wanted-"

"Thought you weren't staying," said the Hunter, smirking. "You have no reason to obey me now but fear. I need no witch's promise."

Still he paused, intrigued by the sudden turn in tactic. He could smell the girl's hatred, harsh as brimstone. skekMal knew a good trap often came with a lure as well, and wondered what ploy simmered beneath the Grottan's change in tune.

"You don't have to agree," said the girl. "But if you do, you can set the terms. I- I still want my Spring and Summer alone. And- and another thing. When I return I want a fair chance to kill you, once every trine. I want to- I want to avenge my family."

The Hunter stared at the girl, her green face a ghastly sphere of hate in the dark, and let out a harsh chuckle.

"Madwoman. Why would _I_ consent to that?"

"You enjoy a hunt," said the Grottan.

She spoke fast, pleading the way an acolyte might mutter a fervent prayer.

"How many times have you made me run from you purely so you could fuck me afterwards? I'll be giving you a challenge. Handing it to you."

skekMal leered.

"You won't succeed. This we both know. Your _Cassra_ told you."

"I want to try," said the girl, her voice raw and cracking. "If I fail you choose my forfeit. I won't fight it. That's- that's my promise. Will you honour it, Hunter?"

Faraway voices from the village made the Hunter raise his head, irritated by the distraction. He couldn't deny the temptation of the Grottan's words, knowing how surely she would fall to him trine after trine, yet how valiantly she would rally against him in battle. Never had a mere _dog_ made such a request, and the Hunter had to admire how well the little cunt knew his vices.

"Return to camp with me," he said. "I will give you your answer there."

He thought the woman would argue, but she pulled her dress back down over her knees and followed silently, her shoulders quaking. The Hunter was mildly impressed to see the keg of alcohol she'd bought in the village, imagining the struggle of her tiny frame lugging it away. He carried it under one arm, licking his beak as the stink of grog struck him.

Once they'd returned to the camp the girl stood, wringing her hands, clearly unwilling to rest until she had the answer she sought. If it hadn't been for that blasted witch skekMal might have simply beaten and refused her, but the ever-lingering prophecy and his own ache for the hunt made him give in.

"The compromise," he said, gruffly. "My terms. Do not argue or I will make you regret it."

Leina only looked at him, or rather towards him, her white eyes struggling in the dark.

"You can have your seasons alone," said the Hunter. "But I will watch you close. If I call you to be fucked then you will _come_. No question. You will not raise a hand to me except for the agreed time. If you do then you will _burn_."

The Grottan nodded. What a paradox she was, terror and anger and vengeance. It excited the Hunter to have captured such a volatile little beast.

"When you return you may face me in battle and try your hand at slaying me. When you fail-"

 _"If I_ fail," said the girl, her voice trembling. " _If_ I fail."

She knew the hopelessness of it, she _knew_ and still she pushed for it. skekMal smirked.

" _When_ you fail I will make you kill a Gelfling. _That_ is the price. I will take no other."

He heard the girl's breathing turn to that rough, uneven sound again, and relished the agony of it. She put her hands to her chest as if trying to realign the rhythm, then opened her mouth, no doubt to voice another stupid plea.

"Go to bed," said the Hunter. "I don't care for your answer. This is the compromise your shaman saw. You have no say in it."

The Grottan turned and stumbled between the canvas skins of the tent.

The Hunter joined her an hour or two later, addled from the reeking grog the Grottan had brought back from the village. By the _Crystal_ , it was good, better than the shit he made himself from various berries and plants in the forest. He'd have to thank the woman in the only way he knew. Grinning under his mask he crawled over the bedroll towards the soft shape of his Grottan. In a moment he realised that she was awake and crying, her wet face cringing away from the Hunter's as his steaming breath struck her cheeks.

"Open your legs, little warrior," he slurred. "I want to hear how you'll scream when I conquer you each trine."

He liked the way her reedy form bucked and twitched with her tears, how she bit her tongue on her cries as he forced an orgasm from her. But what he liked the most was that when he pulled her against him after to keep him warm she hadn't the strength to resist.

He was the only creature she had left, after all.

*

The Gourmand met skekOk and skekLach when they returned from collecting the Stonewood tithes, their bellies fat and wrists bejeweled from the many gifts bestowed upon them.

"A good harvest, then?" he asked, eagerly, admiring the rubies on skekLach's fingers.

"Oh, yes," said the Scroll Keeper. "Thra knows where they found such treasures in the forest. Perhaps they're only paste and glass. We must have them assessed."

"Did you ask after my little baker?" asked the Gourmand. "She's been missing from the kitchens for some weeks now. No word, no warning, very unlike her. She's a sensible Gelfling."

"Not so sensible," skekLach croaked. "Burned to death in her own home. Some accident with an oven. Whole house went up in flame."

"Oh," said skekAyuk, taken aback. "That _is_ a shame. Her cakes will be missed."

"Oh, her _cakes_ , you say?" teased skekOk. "Or something sweeter?"

"Maybe it was no accident," the Collector added. "Was she bored of you so soon, Gourmand?"

"She was _willing_ ," said skekAyuk, with irritation. "I'm not like _skekMal_ , forcing himself on Gelflings right and left like a thundercloud. She seemed _glad_ of the attention, with some persuasion."

The Collector narrowed one watery eye.

"Don't be so sure," she said. "You know who your little baker _is_ , don't you?"

"What do you mean?" asked the Gourmand. "She's a Stonewood wench, that's all. She used to come by a fair bit some trine ago before I rediscovered her talents. Used to bring a sproglet with her, as I recall."

"A green child?" said skekOk, slyly. "A Grottan?"

skekAyuk scratched his fat chin thoughtfully.

"Now that you mention it, yes. Always did strike me as strange. The Stonewood clan don't take well to strangers, and Grottans- when was the last time anyone saw one? Except-"

He paused, realisation dawning.

"The daughter. She's the _Hunter's_ Grottan? Leah, or Lenore, some such name..."

"Leina," the Scroll Keeper corrected. "And yes, we believe she is one and the same. A misfit, a troublemaker, surly and argumentative, the villagers said. Born with sight even poorer than my own, although apparently it didn't keep her out of mischief. Your baker had a biological son, brother to Leina and, indeed, her only close acquaintance. One day the two were seen leaving their village and _never came back_."

The Gourmand felt the urge to sit down, his head ringing with all this new information. He felt like a fool for never having put two and two together before.

"Broke your baker's heart," said skekLach, yawning. "But she must have gotten over it fast if she was lifting her skirts in your kitchens."

"Oh, no," said the Gourmand. "You don't think she- you don't think that Salys _knew_ that skekMal had the girl? Saw him dragging her into the castle? It would not bode well for us if she did."

The three Skeksis fell quiet and looked at each other, only skekLach looking more bored than unnerved by the revelation.

"Well," said the Collector. "She's dead, now. Forget it. Ashes don't tell tales."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always knew the sequel to Lap Dog would be an interesting challenge, mostly because a continuation of this narrative is rare without the protagonist either a) overcoming the assailant as is the case in most rape/revenge stories or b) becoming accepting/loving of the attacker as happens in noncon fiction a fair bit. In this story neither is acceptable to me as I don't want skekMal to lose TOO much power, grow soft or fluffy, as this story actually is written so that it could occur in canon comfortably. I also do not want to sell Leina's character development short, but can't risk her becoming too strong or dominant either- hence why the power dynamics are shifting again.
> 
> Having few narratives that tread a line of erotic horror/sub-dom in this way to compare with it's pretty exciting for me to take these characters and their stories in new directions particularly now fate has come into play. It's always fun to have a 'chosen one' in fiction but... the rub is in Dark Crystal every living thing is a chosen one in their own little path of destiny and I love the idea of that not being terribly special. I don't want Leina to be too protected, too magical, too strong. And I can't have her grow too weak either. I'm not intimidated per se but it's definitely been interesting to see her climb a ladder only to fall again!
> 
> And without getting too personal I can't understate the catharsis of writing this thing <3
> 
> Idk why I'm banging on about this- it's just totally new territory and exploring where I can take it is a lot of... fun is not the right word haha. But something


	23. Raising The Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina reflects on her mother and falls into despair

How strange it felt to grieve all over again. Leina hadn't thought it _possible_ to feel such sorrow, not after setting her losses aside so many unnum ago. But it filled her like a tumour in her belly, aching so terribly that she had to breathe through her nose to avoid making a sound. Suicide was a thing rarely heard of amongst Gelflings; apart from the very elderly or sick, who allowed themselves to pass into respectable death, it was taboo, a _horror_ , wasting the life Thra had so graciously given.

Leina clenched her teeth together to stop them chattering. Even if, as skekMal suggested, all souls returned to the same state there was something infinitely disturbing in Salys flinging herself into the unknown of the devouring fire. The absence of her mother's _Vliya_ , like a howling tear in the atmosphere, was silent and at once echoingly loud.

A dozen memories surfaced, each as sharp and biting as a Fizzgig's tooth. How Salys had only laughed when Leina was caught pulling faces at Tarron's father, how on warm, sunny mornings Leina used to crawl into Salys' bed with her and let herself be held, how Salys had bandaged up a broken leg Leina had gotten after tripping over a tree root and had rained kisses down upon it, one after another. Sweetness Leina would never know again.

She sat up, crawling towards the entrance of the tent where she'd been lying with her back to the Hunter. His presence, the black, seeping evil of it, was unbearable; Leina _knew_ how often Salys must have relived the terror of the beast engulfing her, why the wheedling pressure of the Gourmand's desire had ground her will to live into dust. After all, Leina had felt it herself, had openly welcomed the call of death on skekMal's blade.

But she didn't want it now. She couldn't _stand_ the idea of becoming some eldritch, singular soul, a homogenous form something like the Skeksis must have been before they were Skeksis at all. Pushed into the spirits of Gelfling who despised her, Gelfling who would have rather crossed a road and walk through a puddle than side by side with her. Was _that_ meant to be peace? _Rest?_

The very notion of it made Leina feel breathless. She reached for the tent flap, thinking how badly she wanted to sob like a child but how not even the slightest tear would slip from her.

"Where are you going?" the Hunter growled.

He was awake, of course, one eye open and glinting like a dead star.

"To piss," said Leina. "Can't begrudge me that, can you?"

She spoke roughly, but her pulse rattled like a bag of bones, thinking how arrogant she'd been to lose her fear of the Hunter's brutality. Magic or not, her life hung by the thread of how greatly she entertained him. She must be cautious. skekMal only liked her as much as the grog or the taste of meat; _Leina_ was no necessity, and suddenly she was glad that she'd challenged him as she had, despite the consequences.

He'd keep her as long as she could fight him, and as long as she could handle the fucking afterwards.

"Can I go?" Leina asked, in a softer tone.

She felt pinned by skekMal's scrutiny, imagining how her mother must have trembled beneath it. How her mother must have dreamed of that perilous stare until she'd had to cauterise the image of it from her very soul.

"I'll watch you," said the Hunter, rising from the bedroll. "You've got a look about you I don't like."

"I'm _not_ going to run away," said Leina, stepping out of the tent to avoid the Hunter's vastness pressing against her.

"Damn right you're not. Now _move_."

Leina pushed her hand into her mouth to stop herself screaming in frustration. She walked into the trees and squatted, trying to ignore the Hunter's eyes on her back as she relieved herself in the dirt. She'd wanted to be alone, to process her mother's loss. Now she could only think of skekMal, the way he'd torn her own life and body asunder.

When Leina turned around again the Lord was stoking a fire, the sight of the orange flames igniting making Leina stiffen and begin to sweat. She couldn't help thinking of her mother standing, engulfed in the blaze, red flesh boiling off blackened bones-

"Sit," growled the Hunter. "Or I'll knock your arse down."

Clammy and shuddering Leina lowered herself to the grass, sitting as far from the spitting fire as she could get. The heat on her skin made her feel ill.

"Never knew that you were so afraid of fire, woman," said the Hunter, smirking from under his mask.

"Nor did I," Leina whispered.

"You'll have to get used to it if you want to work on your magic. Your _shaman_ seemed well-acquainted with it."

Leina lowered her head, pressing her lips together. She didn't want the Hunter to know that she'd seen the future without any of the spellwork Cassra had practised; better to let him think her inept. But skekMal was no idiot. He continued to prod at her as he sharpened his righthand sword, chuckling as she flinched at the grinding scrape of metal.

"I look forward to seeing what mischief you conjure when you challenge me every trine. How much other blood I'll taste before I rip your cunt apart."

Gritting her jaw Leina stared at the unfocused orange blaze.

"It _has_ been a while since we had a decent fight," the Hunter continued, slyly. "I miss your claws raking my back."

" _Stop_ it."

skekMal jabbed at the fire so hard with the metal spear he'd been using to stir it that sparks showered just inches away from Leina's feet.

"Watch your mouth, woman."

"No."

Leina saw the Hunter's posture stiffen but she couldn't stop herself talking. She seized the moment not only to dredge the conversation away from provocations but as a chance understand her small glimpse into the future, if it would come to pass, and, if so, when and why.

"Do the _other_ Skeksis kill like you do?"

skekMal studied her, apparently suspicious of the question. He shifted his colossal weight, then said, "They do not hunt, if that is what you're asking. _Their_ whores are willing. Fanatic for their Lord's cocks. Sometimes one goes missing, usually criminals, who would see death or lose a hand either way. But that is their _punishment_. My brothers don't make play of it. Don't want to upend their pretty lives by tainting public favour. But you know this, empty-head."

The Skeksis shook himself and rose from the fire.

"What are you _prying_ for? Wondering if they would have killed you if I'd left you behind the castle walls?"

"No. I'm wondering if they'll all become like you, one day."

The Hunter edged around the fire towards her, the hot metal rod still in his hand.

"Ah, I know. Did one of my brethren fuck your mother, too? Poor witch-child, daughter of a slut. So _that's_ why she set herself alight."

Leina pulled herself up onto her own feet, feeling anger and sorrow squeeze her once more in its savage vice.

" _Why_ can't you leave me alone? Why do you have to _torture_ me? Why do _want_ me to hate you so much?"

"What do you expect of me, woman? A kiss? A sweet embrace? I make you come; that should be enough."

"I should have fucked the Emperor," Leina said, her voice hoarse and agonised. "I saw how he looked at me. I should have let him take me. Even _you_ couldn't have stopped him."

The gloating look in the Hunter's eyes turned quickly to hate, and Leina knew that she should have kept her mouth shut and bourne his nastiness in silence. He seethed across camp like a black mist, turning Leina onto her front so rapidly her shoulders clicked in their sockets. Crushing her torso between his legs the Hunter gripped her right buttock in his hand and pushed it flat. With the other he held the spitting hot rod of metal towards Leina's flesh.

"I warned you not to rile me," skekMal snarled. "I will burn that insolent whore streak out of you. I will _brand_ you as mine."

He ripped the back of her skirt and pressed the head of the rod against her arse so quickly that Leina didn't have a chance to brace herself against the pain. It was so ferocious that she actually believed for a moment that she would die from it. She smacked her head upon the ground, trying not to bellow out her suffering. She pushed herself into the terrible intensity that allowed her _Vliyaya_ to work, thrashing without direction, smelling her own flesh as it seared and smoked.

Suddenly Leina became aware of the many bone trophies biting into her back, their edges as punishing as knifepoints. Remembered how Cassra had read a timeline in a bone.

_Show me your pasts. Show me something to distract me from this hurt._

One of the bones became searing hot against Leina's back, and she _saw_ , suddenly, a red-headed Sifa in a crimson cap and dress, crushed against packed, wet sand, weeping as the Hunter took her, weeping as a blade scored her wings from her shoulders, the froth of the girl beating her head against cold stone. The worst of it was the sense that she'd had _Vlilaya_ , a stronger and more efficient weapon than Leina's.

 _Still_ she'd suffered and died. Another suicide, another hopeless woman.

"What are you _doing_ , witch?" asked the Hunter, leaning in to Leina's shoulder. "I can smell the magic about you."

Leina jerked out a little cry that was part her own, part the raw screeching of _the other._

"Ah," the Hunter breathed. "Never thought I'd hear _your_ voice again, Velyn."

He forced his dead weight against Leina, forcing her thin legs apart. His coarse armour chafed the burn wound, making her cry out again.

" _That's_ it," purred the Hunter. "Been too long since I made two females scream at once."

He plundered her hungrily, invigorated by each moan and shrill that passed her lips


	24. Season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world is changing

The Hunter had been curious as to when the Grottan would attempt to use her magic again, and now here it was, boiling inside her like a wind-storm. There was no doubt in what she saw; skekMal could hear the voice of his dead Sifa girl mimicked in Leina's own, a shrill echo of the past. It was as good as summoning a ghost, _better_ , for in the Grottan's flesh Velyn was brought to life beneath him, the girl who'd died to escape her master.

skekMal hadn't realised how much he'd wanted to correct that old failure until now.

He'd always been bitter that the Sifa witch had died on her own terms, and not his, that she'd _dared_ look him in the eye before breaking her own skull before him. Often he'd told himself that he'd _allowed_ the little bitch to die, that her weakness in folding to madness had spoiled her for him. But that was all folly, blather to soothe the smarting of being beaten by a whore. There was no digging up the dead, nor rewriting events long done, but the Grottan living Velyn's end was a sure way to hammer home the new lesson that death was no escape from him.

Leina arched her back beneath him, her body giving off a muggy heat, like a Rakkida's flank after a hard hunt. Her cries of pain and horror knit a delicious shudder down the Hunter's spine, and he fucked her harder than he had in some time, harder than her fragile body could safely take. His cocks ached with desire even as they rammed her cunt and arse, for as he grunted against her shoulder he half-thought he could smell the ocean on Leina's skin amongst her grassy sweetness, taste brine on her perspiring skin. He raked her with his teeth, filling his mouth with the tang of her blood.

"You'll learn not to mock me," growled skekMal, forcing a hand under the girl's jaw to twist her face half-towards him. "Think you're a jokester. _Clever_. You forget I almost killed you last time you rode another Lord's cock."

The girl only screamed in response, her blind eyes rolling. Thra _knew_ what grisly moments of Velyn's past the woman saw; it was obvious the Grottan had little to no control over her own magic, unable to choose what she glimpsed, or how to end it. Blood tracked her face from her eyes, nose, and mouth, forced from her vessels by the strain of it.

"Any _other_ dog would have died for your whoring," said the Hunter. "You should be grateful I like you enough to spare you."

The Grottan heaved and spasmed, her pain tightening her walls around him. Groaning, skekMal thought he'd _never_ get enough of this creature, this strange riddle of a Gelfling, the pet that fate saw fit to hand him. He ran a palm roughly over the wet brand on Leina's buttock, making the girl shriek even harder. Then suddenly her reedy voice broke, and only a hoarse rasp passed her lips.

"Please," she croaked, desperately. "Don't hurt me any more. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Regret means _nothing_ to you. You forget it as quick as a changing season."

The Hunter pulled out of the girl suddenly and turned her onto her back, grinning the girl's eyes closed in relief. The bone trophy that she'd drawn her magic from was charred black, touched by the fire of her _Vliyaya_ ; the vision of the past had ended. It aroused skekMal to see how the girl's own power turned against her, like a pat snapping against its owner's hand, devouring her strength with a cannibal hunger. The Dousan shaman had been right _again_ ; if Leina pushed herself too hard and too quickly she would destroy herself before the Hunter himself ever could.

"Open your eyes, woman," growled the Hunter. "See me."

Slowly the Grottan's lids opened. What a sight she was, green as the woods, her short hair, slick with sweat, more silver than white, her angled face lovely in its fierce sadness. Hissing through his teeth skekMal stroked his cocks to crisis, ropes of semen striking the woman's face and breasts until they lay like cobwebs upon her.

"I like your spirit, Grottan," said the Hunter. "But do _not_ play with me."

He left her there a while as he went about his routines, cutting meat for their meal, repairing some traps that had grown stiff or broken. The girl didn't move from where he'd turned her on the grass, and it took an hour or so for skekMal to realise that she was not able to.

Grunting irritably he flipped her onto her front again and looked at the brand he'd seared into her flesh. If there was anything skekMal had gained from thinking of Velyn it was a renewed trust in his own decision to treat Leina's wounds whenever he put them there. He rinsed it in grog and smoothed a salve of animal fat upon it, his fingers lingering on the crude mark.

skekMal still remembered the many written languages he'd learned during the old days of loitering at the castle, but he hadn't seared a letter there, only a slash, such as his blade might make. The girl didn't need to be read like some book, after all; if the Hunter had his way no other creature would set eyes on the brand and live.

"Can you stand?" he asked, shortly.

The girl shook her head.

"You are not a childling, and I am not your father. Get up, damn you. I won't abide your games."

"Not a game. It... _hurts_."

"Should have thought of that before you burned your fucking flame."

The Hunter narrowed his eyes as the Gelfling scratched her arms and legs in the dirt, her ears and wings squeezed tight against her body in agony. Beads of sweat squeezed out of her and struck the ground with audible thuds.

"You stupid bitch."

skekMal plucked the girl from the ground and carried her to the tent, feeling himself stir again as her hot little body seared against him. He dumped her unceremoniously upon the furs, surprised that she didn't cry out in pain. After a minute of lying there she licked her parched lips and said, "When will you let me go?"

With a short laugh the Hunter said, "The first day of Spring is still many unnum away. You will have to bear me some time yet, woman."

*

The following weeks were consumed by another long hunt, leaving scarce time to fuck the Grottan, or indeed pay attention to her at all. There were days he even forgot that she was there, for she had grown still and sullen, barely speaking unless addressed, which was unlike her. She'd taken up her needlework again, stitching leathers and furs for the colder months, but she rarely did it in front of him, waiting until he was away to take up her thread.

The forest was beginning to turn as autumn came, the trees shouldering the orange of a roaring campfire. The Hunter, returning victorious with his kill, was at last free to admire the beauty of his kingdom. It was better than the gaudy gems his brothers coveted, better even than Leina- but when he laid down the slaughtered beast in the fallen leaves by their tent he saw he raise her head to greet him, and thought that she came close.

"Here, Leina," he said. "Follow."

"Where are we going?" asked the girl, rising to her feet.

Her face was tight with suspicion, but she padded after skekMal without complaint.

"Quiet. Just walk."

The Hunter led her out towards a vast clearing where the river beat down into a waterfall, gleaming black against the vivid reds and browns of the fallen leaves. The air smelled of churned soil and the musk of rain, and as the girl raised her head to look at the scene and sniffed the air skekMal saw that she experienced the same simple appreciation for his world as he did.

A leaf fell from an overhanging branch and caught in the woman's hair. A brief smile touched Leina's face before she noticed skekMal looking at her and scowled, her dislike stirring him.

" _Why_ did you bring me here, Hunter?"

He approached her lithely and shoved her down into the crimson leaves, his tail whisking up the skirt of her dress to caress the shining scar of his brand on her arse.

"To fuck you. What _else_ do I use you for?"  
  



	25. Angler Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter wants Leina as his bait again

Leina stared up at the amber sky, breathing the musk of dirt and leaves in a sigh of abject melancholy. At this time of year she was usually sitting in Salys' kitchen, keeping Tarron from under their mother's feet while she baked pies from seasonal root vegetables. That, and taking her little brother on long walks through the forest- or, rather, being taken by him; Tarron had always pretended that Leina knew the way better than he did.

 _Thra_ , it had been a time since Leina had allowed herself to think of her brother at length. It was growing harder and harder to dredge up her old life in any distinct fashion, as if her mind had eroded the happier moments to save her the bittersweet pain of knowing what had once been.

But as the world became coloured with Autumn's umber Leina found herself reeled further into that sadness, into reflection, so heavy about her that had the ache for revenge not kept her afloat she would have sunk into the mire of it completely.

Leina put an arm over her face, not wanting the Hunter to read her distress. He was crouching by the riverbed, taken by a rare stillness save for his tail, which stirred the fallen leaves around him with idle motions. Leina was beginning to notice such lapses in his brutish manner more and more, and felt slightly awed by it, the way she might seeing an Arathim at rest.

She'd thought the Skeksis comfortable around her the _first_ time he'd taken her, but now she realised that he hadn't been, not the way he was with her now. He treated her as if she couldn't see him, or as if her seeing held no more merit than the observations of a sword discarded in the grass.

"Quarry will grow scarce, soon," said skekMal, suddenly, still with his back to Leina. "Animals, at least. Most sleep in the winter. Hunting will dry."

He had, of course, noticed her stare, and although untroubled felt it necessary to respond.

"My people store food to keep them through the colder months," said Leina, flatly. "I've seen you make kills last through hard times. We won't starve."

"We will not," skekMal agreed. "But I don't hunt only to eat."

He stood up, stretching his joints until they clicked.

"There are creatures that do not bury their heads in the cold. I'll take my pick of _them_."

The sly arrogance of the words made them all the more unsettling, for Leina well knew what- or rather, _who_ -was meant by them. After a pause she said, "I'm sure the Winter doesn't take the Crystal Desert. You could return _there_. Hunting was good, wasn't it?"

"I've no more want of that death-place. I've had my fill. I won't return unless my need is great."

"The Silver Sea, then," said Leina, clenching her fists at her sides. "There has to be lots of swimming beasts you haven't conquered yet. Why not _them_?"

The Hunter snorted, deriding the notion.

"You think I haven't done my time on the ocean? I'm _old_ , Leina. Well-travelled. And I'm no fisherman. Some waste their tiny lives hunting fish that might never take their bait. A fool's game."

"But _you're_ immortal. What difference does it make how long you wait for your prey?"

The Skeksis narrowed his eyes, as if deciding whether to become angered by the question or not.

"Ah, tender-hearted one. You wouldn't understand. The thrill of hunting on foot makes a feeble ghost of the reel."

"Beyond the sea, then," said Leina, still lying on her back in the leaves.

She could feel her blood pumping in her eardrums, desperate to turn the Lord's mind from unnecessary death.

"Beyond the sea- Fr'oudea told me that there were uncharted lands. There _are_ , aren't there? And probably quarry that nobody's conquered yet. So why-"

Again skekMal blew air through his nostrils, but his irritation was more in play than true anger.

" _Told_ you, woman. My brethren and I plundered this fucking rock a thousand trine before you were a seed in your mother's cunt. Anything worth taking I have taken. I leave seafaring to the Mariner."

Leina decided not to ask who that might be, guessing from the Hunter's tone that it was another Lord, and _not_ one he necessarily thought much of.

"There are only two races I seek to hunt," said skekMal. " _One_ so stupid it is like reaping a field. The other-"

Leina put her hands over her ears, refusing to hear the word. It was no use; the Hunter crossed to her pile of leaves and jerked her out of it by the scruff of her neck, forcing Leina to her feet.

"You will hunt with me tomorrow," he said. "One of your kin. I want to test your fire."

" _No_ ," said Leina. "Only once a year, if I fail to kill you. _That_ was our compromise."

She wriggled in skekMal's grip, opening her wings and lashing the air with them to spin her away from him. He held her at arm's length, watching her as if she were a worm twisting futilely on some hook. It took a moment or so for Leina to realise that, in the Hunter's eyes, that was _exactly_ what she was.

"That oath was for your hand dealing the blow," said skekMal. "I do not ask that now. You will only lure my prey with your magic."

"I don't know _how_ to," Leina insisted, still fighting hopelessly in the Hunter's grip. "You _know_ I don't. When it happens it just- it just _happens_. I can't _make_ it do what I want."

"You'll learn. A lot of things you _couldn't_ do, once. I will make a pretty trap of you."

He threw her back at the leaves again, the fall jangling Leina's bones so that she whooped a pained breath and couldn't find air to speak for a minute or so. When at last she did she rasped, "No women. No children. Please."

"Don't make commands of me, little cunt," snarled the Hunter. "You will lure who I choose and be thankful I did not put the killing blade in your hand."

"Not _commanding_ ," said Leina. " _Begging_. Please. _Please_ , Hunter."

It repulsed her to say it, but the thought of scraping herself into the terrified head of some The Hunter jerked his head, gesturing for Leina to follow him out of the clearing.

"I should make you draw an infant to discourage your whining," he snapped at her.

Panic leapt into Leina's throat like a bird trapped in a chimney flue. She ran ahead of skekMal and put her hands up to stay him in his tracks.

"What are you _doing_ , stupid fucking dog?" he said.

Gulping down her revulsion Leina reached out to skekMal's robes, to her own chest, loosing her breasts in a clumsy tear of fabric. As her cold palm touched the Hunter's flesh he jolted away from her and roared, striking her so hard across the mouth a tooth loosened in its socket.

"Filth," he said. "If I wanted a slut I would keep one of those leeching Vapras, starving for a lick of glory. You will _not_ bargain your flesh to me unless I ask it of you."

"But I-"

"Seal your maw, woman."

He barged Leina as he passed her, deliberately knocking her off-balance. Considering how skekMal's brethren had welcomed such a trade Leina was shocked by his revulsion.

"I should cut your hand off for touching me. You will not control me as you did my brethren."

"I wasn't _trying_ to. I swear it. I was just- I know that you-"

"Hmm."

The Skeksis glowered at her, then continued to stride ahead, cutting a churning path through the leaves. Knowing that she'd be expected to follow despite his anger Leina scurried after him, cursing her own rash impulses.

"Hunter, _please_ , I didn't mean to disrespect you."

"That'd be a first," skekMal grunted.

As Leina approached him from behind his tail snapped about her throat like a leather whip and knocked her, choking, to the ground. He rounded on her, his pupils black grains of rage.

"My brothers are idiots. They sold themselves short when they traded for your slit. That is a kind of power. Don't tell me you don't know this. You boasted of it as the Chamberlain's knife hung from my chest."

"I know," said Leina, rubbing her neck miserably. "But I'm not _asking_ for power. I- I just want this _one_ thing."

"Seems you're always asking for _something_. Don't try to buy my favour like that again. The day you lie willing with me is the day I open your throat. I am tired of you reminding me what a worthless slut you are."

He was genuinely offended, Leina realised. Of course he was; how many creatures in existence had touched the Hunter by choice and survived their folly? Afraid of what punishment awaited her Leina began to quiver violently, thinking of the brand, of the nightmare things she'd seen while he seared it into her flesh.

"Look at you, you fucking coward," the Hunter sneered. "Bold enough to touch my cock but afraid of a beating. You're odd, know that?"

He walked away for a third time, but didn't strike Leina as she joined him, puffing and struggling to match his pace.

"What do _you_ care what Gelfling I hunt?" skekMal asked her, abruptly. "What _respect_ has your kind ever shown you, Grottan? Your mother was duty-bound to raise you. Your brother knew no better. The Dousan sold you to me. The rest scorn you for the clan you hail from. You have no friends amongst them. Tell me it is not so."

When Leina didn't reply the Hunter laughed and said, "Your silence talks."

"You told me once that your brothers taught us to hate each other. It's not _our_ fault. And I don't want to kill innocents."

"And what makes womenfolk more innocent than men? Both have wronged you the same. You think any _female_ you spare would take _you_ as their sister? They would spit on you as soon as look at you."

Defeated, Leina remained quiet until they had reached camp again. The exchange had brought her misery to such a pitch she barely had the energy to think, let alone engage in a verbal scuffle with the Hunter. She went to the tent and lay down, ignoring the smell of roasting meat as skekMal ate by the fire. She could stand flesh even less since Salys had died, and barely felt hunger's bite, as if her despondent heart had blunted its teeth.

When the Hunter came to bed that evening he shook her awake, the force rattling her bones.

"Come. Sleep under the stars."

"Why?" asked Leina, stirring groggily.

"You and your pointless questions. Either you obey or we hunt now, in the dark. Your eyes don't do well at night. Pick carefully."

The hopelessness of being caught between two options rendered Leina incapable of moving, even though she knew the danger of disobeying the Hunter's request. Snorting, he lifted her up like a child and hoisted her onto his shoulders.

"We hunt, then."

Leina was surprised that he did not hurt her. She got the sense that skekMal was aware of her mood and was being cautious not to tip her back towards the dejection of craving death. It amazed her that for his simple ways he could be astute, at times, but then he was forced to be, the nature of his sport reliant on predicting the turn of his prey.

"You won't find Gelfling _now_ ," said Leina, softly, barely lifting her head to speak. 

Still the Hunter heard her, his hearing as sharp as ever.

"Little do _you_ know. Many travellers can be found in the forest at night. They sleep as we do."

"I thought you only hunt _worthy_ prey. Taking someone while they're asleep is cheating."

"Not if you and your bloody fire tell them to _wake_."

Anxiety fought Leina's sorrow and won. She clung to skekMal's back, her skin prickling, waiting for his sign that some quarry was found. After half an hour of creeping through the woods the Hunter stopped in a copse of trees, his sharp, feathered hairs on end.

"I smell a Gelfling male. A Landstrider with him. Both slumbering."

Guilty relief ran over Leina before she became tense with nerves again.

"What do you want me to do to him?"

"Wake him up. Put some thought in his head that brings him this way."

Leina considered her options. She could lie, pretending that she'd tried and had been unable to. Perhaps she could even frighten the Gelfling to bolt in the opposite direction, a likely outcome either way, considering what had happened with the birds. Either was better than being an accomplice to murder, a pet monster of some greater beast.

"Vareja," said skekMal, softly, one of his upper arms slipping beneath the back of her dress.

Leina's throat clamped tight hearing him use that other name.

"If that creature flees I will chase it down and make you gut it before me. Don't think you're ready for his blood on your hands."


	26. Hunting Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina lures prey for the Hunter

Leina braced her legs as the Hunter shucked her off his back, landing almost silently on the grass. Through the scrub of trees ahead she could see only slight shapes even with her eyeglasses, a smaller, sleeping lump and a larger once: the Gelfling target and his Landstrider.

A thrill of dread crossed the back of Leina's neck, and she thought: _I deserve to die for helping skekMal kill this poor man. I deserve to burn._

"What are you _waiting_ for, blinding?" growled the Hunter. "Use your magic. Usher him to me."

Leina twitched, but said nothing. She didn't want to admit what that it took strong emotion to spring her _Vlilaya_ into life; he'd take full and brutal advantage of that, if he knew. She closed her eyes, concentrating the cold pit of sorrow inside her it until she heard the familiar, indescribable sound of the blue flame. With every mote of her will she pushed it towards the sleeping man, fumbling her way about him until she found his consciousness touching hers with the dullness of a sleepwalker.

It was strange to be in another's resting dreams, an abstract, random soup of memory and the surreal. One moment Leina was upon a Landstrider, behind the Gelfling stranger's eyes-

 _I can't stop long_ , she heard him say to himself. _Trade will run dry if I am not fast. I can't afford to lose custom_

-the next she was on a ship afloat on water as black as onyx and still, impossibly still, the waves frozen. This man was a Sifa trader, taking pause on his journey pedalling wares to other clans. Leina tried to sift through the dreamscape for a suggestion of what kind of person he was, even the slightest flaw, something to justify his killing. But she could only see and hear the surrealist fragments that the trader himself was experiencing; it was time to give him a little push.

 _Show me something you regret_ , Leina murmured. _Show me a secret._

She felt the trader become aware of her, sluggishly resisting her intrusion. He probably didn't understand that she was a real being, thinking her another figment of sleep. Leina felt him turn away from her, seeming to shrug off her presence there. The world of his dreams shimmered gently into a long beach, a beach with coins rather than pebbles in the sand.

Even within the trader's dream Leina was aware of the Hunter's impatience. Hastily she changed her line of thought, pushing the trader towards his memories, praying that something filthy and damnable would arise. She saw him and his husband embracing in a port, three small children plunging their hands into jewels brough back from a successful trade. A funeral that ended in a celebration, so bittersweet that Leina found herself on the verge of tears for someone she didn't even know.

More and more fragments flitted before her, and she sensed nothing there but contentment. There _were_ , however, things amongst that contentment that might have been shame to another man- soldiers tricked into buying weaponry at an inflated price, Vapra noblewomen duped with birds trained to slip their cages and return to the trader some days after a sale. Nothing deserving of death, but these were little falsehoods that Leina could cling to, later, when the guilt set into her with its pinching claws.

 _Wake up_ , she said. _Your Landstrider has run away. Wake up._

The trader seemed to stir a little, but then crumpled back into sleep again. Frustrated, Leina withdrew from his mind and pushed towards the Landstrider. This was easy, or easi _er_ , its animal mind folding beneath her pressure. She didn't stay there long; the blank, innocent simplicity of its thoughts unsettled her, like opening the mind of a child.

Into that thoughtless calm she put a single, cruel emotion: **fear.**

The Landstrider awoke so quickly that Leina actually felt a twinge of pain in her skull at the suddenness of it. For a moment it stood its ground, clearly trying to gage whether it could face off whatever unseen threat lurked in the woods. Again Leina thrust herself at it, scoring terror through the animal's mind like a scar, and at last the beast bolted, waking its master in the process.

Leina was by now heaving with sweat and shaking with adrenaline, but she knew that she couldn't rest until she'd done what skekMal had asked of her. Watching the Sifa trader stare wildly about him in the gloom she forced herself into his thoughts, now jumbled with fear and confusion.

_North. Go North; your Landstrider ran that way. Follow it._

The trader brushed himself down and hurried quickly towards the thicket in which Leina and the Hunter were hiding, seeming to accept Leina's thought as his own. skekMal grinned, drawing his swords in anticipation of the kill.

"That's my girl," he said. "Tonight I'll make you come so hard you forget all three of your fucking names."

As the Sifa sprinted at the trees the Hunter slipped around him, his tread soundless in the dark. Leina _heard_ rather than saw what happened next- the whicker of blades sawing the air, the hoarse scream of the trader, the crunch of flesh and bone torn apart under the Hunter's blows. She smelled copper and the raw stink of offal, the acrid tang of piss as the trader gargled and twitched in the grass.

As he died Leina tasted the trader's last though, an image of his husband, his children, laughing. Laughing.

Leina felt her knees fold beneath her, felt the grass and fallen leaves cushion her fall. She tasted the brine of her own tears, salty as the blood that had been spilled by her hand as much as the Hunter's. What right had _she_ to hate skekMal when she was his tame dog, dragging his prey to his feet? What right had _she_ to cry, as if she were _sorry_?

Sorry was something Leina couldn't afford to be any more, not if she wanted to live, and she _did_ , at least more than the alien realm of dying. She must separate herself from the horror of killing Gelfling as she had from animals, make herself hard and cruel. Fr'oudea would be the last to know her kindness- but even as she told herself this Leina doubted her own resolve.

"Where _are_ you, woman?" asked the Hunter, gruffly. "Don't go slithering off in the dark."

"I'm not," she said.

She scrubbed her face with her fingers, but didn't move from where she was crouched in the grass. A slip of moonlight opened through the clouds overhead, passing over skekMal as he stood over her.

"Hmm," he said. "You are still a soft touch. What happened to your mettle, little fighter?"

The Skeksis humped two large objects over his shoulder- the corpse of the trader, and the sack of goods the poor man had meant to sell. Blood fouled him like some hideous warpaint, making his mask appear like something torn from a beast freshly dead. A shiver rippled across Leina's skin, and she knew that the Hunter saw it.

"I like you this way," he said. "Don't want you getting too rough again. No fun in rutting a shadow of myself. Got my own hands for that."

He snapped out an arm and pulled Leina to him, casting the dead Gelfling and his satchel aside so that he had all four arms free to lift her roughly against him. She bit her tongue against the rush of nausea that came at the stench of death, and harder still as the Hunter swiped a rough palm across her face, masking it with blood. He plucked her smeared eyeglasses from the bridge of her nose and shoved them into some pocket as he pressed Leina into the mouldering leaves.

"Remember how you dressed for the castle," he leered, ripping her clothes off her in terse, careless motions. "Perfumes. Black filth on your eyes. Your whore mouth. All shit. _This_ is how I want you."

The salt-scent of death reminded Leina so intensely of those she'd lost that she screamed out, forgetting the desire to avoid the Hunter's wrath.

"No! Stop it! Stop it, I'm not a monster, I'm not, I can't-"

"Ha. You think too highly of yourself, Leina."

Hungering fingers dragged across her hair, her breasts, her cunt, trailing her in blood until she was slick with its pinkness.

"If you were even halfway to becoming a beast I'd put you down."

skekMal crouched between Leina's thighs, his breath hot and wet upon her labia. His tongue slid over the blood he'd painted there, over her clitoris, the coarse surface spuring the usual ache of desire within her. His free hands pinned her hips in a bruising pressure, even that sensation stirring a learned response of yearning.

She hated him, the way he had her speared like a unamoth on a taxidermist's board and made some slave part of her need the pleasure of his reward. Hated that he had so saturated her life with death that even soaked in the blood of her kin Leina felt herself shudder and buck beneath his beak, clenching her fists in the grass so that she didn't make a sound. She wished that she could clamber into his mind and drive him mad with fear, like the Landstrider. That he was of Thra, as she was, and not a God from some unreachable world.

"You have some restraint," said the Hunter, licking his teeth. "I did not hear a sound from you. But I'm not finished."

He rolled on his back in the grass, lifting Leina on top of him. She felt his hugeness pierce her, and scrabbled at his cloak, her pain making every muscle seize like a cramp. skekMal gazed up at her from within his mask, admiring her, drinking her pain like a sweet honey.

"I hate you," Leina whispered.

She wasn't sure that the beast would hear her over the clink of armour and trinkets and the slap of flesh meeting flesh, but he did, a soft little growl bubbling in his throat.

"Not _all_ of me," he said.

His hands squeezed the small of her back, moving her upon him, his rough warmth sending a shock of arousal up her spine, and she despised him even more for it. He'd taught her that he, his touch, was all that Leina had, it wasn't her fault, and she would never _want_ him. But soon she was erupting with pleasure again, her throat releasing an ugly keen. Furious, she wrestled against the arms that held her, then gave up almost at once, seeing the gloating look in the Hunter's eyes.

"Good dog," he said.

He pushed her off him and stood, picking the corpse back up from the ground.

"Saw you had to use the animal to wake the Gelfling," said the Hunter. "You can do better. Work on that."

Leina stared at his turned back with such loathing she was surprised that he couldn't feel it.

 _I'll do better_ , she thought. _I'll teach myself to turn your prey against you._


	27. The Proud Man's Contumely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekMal reflects on how his desires for Gelflings began

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay I'm always so bloody busy haha!!
> 
> I actually really enjoyed writing this chapter as I've never really touched on how this all started on the Dark Universe version of Dark Crystal came to pass and it's amusing to me that it pretty much works in canon!

The Hunter hadn't expected to take the girl to the favoured waterfall again so soon, but the smell of blood on her was foulling quickly and besides, he wanted to see her gleaming wet and naked in the moonlight.

Now the Grottan stood thigh-deep in the black pool before him, shivering as she rubbed caked blood from her thin body with a soap of animal fat she kept for such things. The many scratches and bruises upon her looked onyx against her paler green and her hair, which skekMal had shorn to her scalp only an unnum ago, had already grown almost down to her chin again. Good; the Hunter had missed it long, running it through his talons as he raped her in the cool grass.

skekMal growled under his breath, part in amusement, part in irritation with his own lust. Oh, he had _preferences_ now, did he, he who had always fucked indiscriminately whenever the chance and need had arisen? Before Leina the Hunter had chosen his conquests with the randomness a luxury of choice allowed him- Sifa one month, Vapra traveller the next, having no specifications beyond beauty, which was not difficult, amongst Gelflings. Now as he watched the girl's sad, sharp little figure in the night he ached for her, all of her, the way a starved Rakkida might slaver over Podling's flesh, succulent and sweet.

None would spur him so, after her, skekMal was sure of it.

He couldn't remember quite when he and the other Lords had first gotten the taste for Gelflings- perhaps some time around the Alliance of the Crystal for his brothers, and skekMal some murky period before. The Gelfling were just about the only species on Thra whose beauty aligned with the Skeksis' own, and skekMal had no desire for his kin; the thought of being within any of his brothers was too much like the oneness of the urSkeks, an intolerable thing. The Hunter had no doubt that _they_ had made passes at one another, however, incest being far from beneath their filthy vices.

But as ever the Hunter had risen above them, pure and raw. Of his time as an urSkek he had retained an eye for beauty, thus to the Gelfling race skekMal had turned, and although their size and delicate build was a poor match for his consuming bulk he had liked the comparison. He developed a preference for womenfolk almost at once, although he'd dabbled and enjoyed others, here and there, his hunger having no bounds.

Such encounters, while taboo, had been consensual, in those days; although skekMal had still been coarse and brutish in his methods it was as a Lord of any land might take a peasant girl, never meaning more than a rut. He learned by instinct and practice how to make females scream and wet the forest beneath him, how to force pleasure through delectable pain.

But the further skekMal wilded from the castle grounds and civilised beings the less sense there had seemed to be in stomaching even the scantest courtship. Leave that to his brothers with their simpering pleasantries and manipulation, so flattered to be desired by their precious subjects. skekMal hadn't wanted to _ask_ for the right to fuck, only to _take_ , and although there were women enough willing to be ravaged in such a way the Hunter soon found that he detested their wanting him, too, the blandness of it.

The Gelflings were emotional, attached creatures, with their sweet voices and prattling questions and embraces. Their pining was ridiculous to see, as was the suggestion that the Hunter accept a mating dance, a stupid fluttering of wings like a Unamoth twisting into a flame. Their relationships, their customs, their _love_ \- even in those civilised days skekMal had derided them, contemplating sneeringly if his brethren had ever entertained the sweet nothings of poetry from some rat-brained paramour for the sake of getting their cocks wet.

But no, surely even _they_ had not. To fall in love, as skekMal basely understood it, was to make oneself utterly vulnerable to another, and to consider them one's equal, a combination both dangerous and foolish. All the Skeksis feared weakness, and would allow no-one close enough to compromise their safety, not even each other. No, none of the Lords had ever been in love, but it was perhaps skekMal alone who had first defined his being as love _less_ , discarding brethren, laws, and, at last, the petty rituals of sex.

His tastes for fucking had aligned with the hunt ever since. skekMal hadn't rutted every Gelfling he'd caught over the trine- many he had simply slaughtered and devoured -but it was lust, in general, that motivated him to pursue them. After all, had skekMal been asked specifically to track a Gelfling he would have scorned the request for its lack of challenge. It was mere play to him- still as much as he enjoyed a fuck the Hunter couldn't recall that an exact _type_ of Gelfling had ever called to him before, not in appearance, at least.

And now. _Now_ he'd found one accursed creature that he would choose over another, and while the convenience served him now it might one day hinder him. Coveting anything in the wilds was a risk; the terrain, its inhabitants, the weather, all shifted and changed, forcing skekMal to change with them. If Leina couldn't keep up as well as the little smart-smouthed bitch had convinced herself she could then she'd be carried away like a branch in a river's flow, and the Hunter would have to return to the old way of things.

Sometimes he craved it, the simplicity of the world before her. But who was to say that time had ended? Keeping this witch-whore at hand didn't mean that skekMal couldn't have his fill from the woods. She was not his wife, and she did not chain him. It merely struck skekMal as odd that what had begun as a perversion, the means of emptying an ache, had taken root in his life and remained there, remained even though he could not love.

Fucking fate; the devilry of Thra.

As the Grottan shook water from her hair and approached the bank skekMal found himself staring at her white, exhausted eyes, questioning what she made of her own muddled emotions. A grin parted his beak as he recalled how feral she'd become in parting from him, how she'd turned her throat to his blade in abandon. She'd find no place in the world that wasn't at his side, poor little bitch. His fucking her had made her something other than Gelfling, a mutant who would never belong to any clan, to any people, horrors making her ill-suited to the toil of weary life.

But as _his_ thing she was becoming quite a glorious little beast.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" asked the girl, softly.

Had her tone been sharper skekMal would have struck her, but she only sounded tired and frightened.

"You'll freeze, woman. Dress."

He kicked the dead trader's bag towards her.

"Take your pick of it. I would only tear it into bandages, and I do not often take injury."

The Grottan looked at him as if she expected something nasty to be hidden in the satchel, then stuck her wet little hands inside it, rooting like a Fizzgig in mud. He saw her run silks and leathers and chainlink armour through her fingers as if handling gold, discerning the quality by feel, not by sight. The pathetic joy in her expression over something so simple made skekMal smirk. _This_ was how he'd keep her soul from rotting into sorrow: offer her slithers of rewards and watch her greedily lap up the crumbs.

"How much of this am I allowed to keep?" asked Leina, softly.

She didn't look him in the eye, only crouched, juddering with cold over her spoils.

"All," said skekMal. "But _you_ will be responsible for it. I won't carry your finery."

Still the Grottan made no move to dress.

"What do I have to do in return?"

"Nothing."

"But- but you don't _like_ me to have things like this-"

"Prefer you clothed than frostbitten."

The girl, whose lips were turning grey with cold, shrunk back from him a little.

"It's... a gift?"

The revolted shame in Leina's voice made the Hunter scoff.

"Don't flatter yourself, hound," he said "There is no sentiment in a dead Gelfling's load."

*

skekMal observed the girl carefully over the following weeks, noting that she barely opened the bag of clothes unless her own shoddily made ones fell apart or were hung out to dry after washing. She was stubborn, this woman; not even the sweeping misery of her depression had broken her in on that front. Her eating had slipped again, and she was so thin that he could almost circle her waist with his hand.

She was trying to distance herself from him, his ways, separating them in mind and body alike.

The season was turning again, fallen leaves churning to black pulp on earth hardened with frost. The mornings were brutal, setting damp chill that seeped into the tent and the furs no matter how many were piled within. skekMal took to burning the campfire all day and night, sending the girl for firewood to keep her mind from the grey descent that he had sensed in her. She'd never worked more under his rule than she did now, making traps, sharpening his weapons, cleaning up the camp when they moved through the forest.

At last she opened the bag of clothes again, and skekMal returned from the hunt one early morning to find Leina standing in the trees in a hooded fur cloak and boots, eyes closed, lips trembling. _Spellcasting_ , the Hunter realised, honing her craft while he was gone.

Something darted in the grass ahead of her and the Hunter noticed a pair of Fizzgigs, circling, their needle teeth bared. They rolled at each other, snapped and snarled and drew blood, then broke apart, and Leina gasped, her eyes flying open, a flush high on her cheekbones. Yelping, Fizzgigs ran into the undergrowth, leaving tiny prints in the frosted grass. The Grottan, still breathing heavily, dropped to a crouch, rocking on her heels with the same lunatic agitation the Hunter had seen in her before.

"Finished playing with your toys, witch?" asked skekMal, approaching her from behind.

Leina jolted so hard that she toppled forward onto the ground. Scramblimg around to face him she raised her hands, fending off a blow that hadn't yet come.

"I- I was trying to break them up," she said. "Seeing if I could do it. I failed. I don't know why."

skekMal reached out and seized her by the hood of her cloak, pulling so hard that the neck throttled her.

"Don't even think of meddling with my hunts, woman. If you dare try to crawl about my head again I'll rip your arse bloody."

Gargling on her own breath the woman said, "You- know- I - _can't_."

The Hunter released her, sneering as the cloak fell open at the woman's breasts.

"Hmm. Wouldn't surprise me if you could. You defy odds, little fighter."

He stepped over her, meaning to go about his business and leave her trembling in fear, but his eye was drawn back to the green breast loose in the slaughtered trader's fur again and hardened to think how grudgingly the bitch must wear his token.

"Get up," said skekMal.

The Gelfling obeyed, her smallness standing before him as delicate as a snowdrop beside a boulder.

"Your mouth," said the Hunter. "I want it."

Flinching, the Grottan nodded and crept towards him, running her small tongue on her lips to moisten them for the taking of his cock. skekMal did not wait for her clumsy fumblings. He pressed her silken head to his groin, and the violent cough of her swallowing him reminded the Hunter exactly _why_ had been the first to corrupt Gelflings all those trine ago. Why Leina, his stubborn girl, was still such a joy to break.


	28. Sepulchrous Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never keep a secret from the Hunter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exciting turn in this chapter!
> 
> Highly excited to share my first fanart! <3
> 
> The artist is Vampiria who's been following this story for a bit and reached out with some art which was highly exciting!! This chapter is dedicated to you, my new friend ❣

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**Leina by Vampiria**

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Leina crouched on the hard-packed frost where skekMal had left her, spitting quietly onto the solid dirt. She hoped that she looked cowed, submissive; _within_ Leina felt anything but, alight with the adrenaline rush of having slipped another development in her magic past the Hunter.

No, it was _better_ than a rush, a high so like arousal that Leina was sure that if she put a hand between her legs she'd find her cunt wet. She tried to control her breathing, slowing the kettle-drum beat of her heart to a crawling dirge. Distantly the blue flame still crackled and smoked, and Leina felt for the first time how present _Vlilaya_ was in everything around her from the trees to the soil underfoot.

Was this how it _always_ was for advanced Shamans like Cassra, like Aughra of legend? If so Leina couldn't imagine how they could retain any semblance of poise and control. Even now as that sense began gently ebbing and fading away it still it was too much for her to bear, like an orgasm in perpetuity. She held her knees and waited for it to pass, wondering if she would faint from the intensity of its flow.

The death of the Sifa Trader had triggered it, of this Leina had no doubt. 

The callousness, the backhand evil of helping skekMal commit slaughter to save _herself_ had awakened something what even great emotion had not: she'd managed to pit the Fizzgigs against one another, filling their minds with teeth and fear and hate.

That feeling had been a hideous thing, something akin to a fever dream Leina had conceived, once, as a child. She remembered lying in bed, Salys' cool palm at her brow, kicking and sweating as hallucinations of spine-backed creatures crept and danced upon the walls even when her eyes were open. _That_ was how it had felt to force the poor little Fizzgigs to grapple, an iron-maiden snap of pain and foaming avarice.

Every bone in her worn body had shrieked like the joists of an old door in a squall and Leina had _seen_ a colour, _heard_ a colour, the cylonic blue of _Vliyaya._

 _He is your enemy. She is your enemy_ ; this she had said to each of the Fizzgigs, bending their simple consciousness' towards the feelings of the words.

They had inherited her violence the way fear ripples through a herd of Landstriders, their tiny eyes pinning with apoplectic fury. The clash as they'd launched at one another had made Leina choke on a whooping breath, and for a split-second she hadn't known whether she was going to scream or come. In the end she did neither, only kneeling in wet frost with a sweat of revulsion and ecstasy simmering beneath her heavy furs.

What would it take for her to force the minds of larger, more intelligent creatures- Nebrie, Arathim, Mounders? Would that even _possible_ , considering that Leina had barely veen able to shift the mind of her own kin? Only time would tell. _Practice_ would tell. She'd have half an unnum to flex her _Vlilaya_ while completely alone, after all, growing it as surreptitiously as a plant in the dark. 

Leina hadn't felt such excitement since her days training with Hila'an. _He'd_ be proud of her, she thought, despite her sins, proud because _he'd_ lived wild and selfish and against the ways of his clan, once, too. He might balk at the killing of Gelfling, but perhaps he'd done that himself, once, fending off brackish villains on The Silver Sea. 

_I'll grow strong for you, Old One. The way you wanted me to, just for the fight of it. How did I forget that lesson?_

Thinking of the old Dousan made Leina feel suddenly, acutely, _alive_. Surviving wasn't just for _herself_ ; it was to avenge the lost to the best of her powers, to remain the last surviving victim of the Hunter's, a lonely flower standing upright in a battlefield. 

Abruptly Leina stood, gripped with the sudden need to do something other mulling over her plight. She passed skekMal, who was occupied with flaying some hapless beast, thinking to walk amongst the trees a while to think, a new liberty the Hunter had begun to allow her, in small doses.

"Where are _you_ going?" snarled skekMal, making Leina stop dead in her tracks.

"Stretching my legs," said Leina, quietly. "I won't go far. You'd only fetch me back, if I did, anyway."

"Ah, we understand each other."

The Hunter approached Leina suddenly from behind, swallowing her like an anthropomorphised shadow, all latent menace. One hand fumbled her roughly, finding her slickness beneath the furs.

"I can _smell_ the heat on you," said skekMal. "What have you been thinking of, little woman?"

"Nothing."

" _Nothing_? I doubt it."

He bore her down into the frost-whitened grass, smearing its wetness along her cheekbone. The grip on her arm pulled so harshly that for a jarring moment Leina was sure that her shoulder had dislocated, feeling the pain in the roots of her teeth before her arm.

"The _truth_ , fibber," snapped the Hunter. "What stirred you?"

 _Thra_ , did he want her again, this creature, after fucking her mouth raw? He did; Leina could feel the desire on skekMal's taut, massive form like sweat. It seemed he'd wanted her more since they'd left the Sea; perhaps eating the Witch-Shaman had invigorated a juvenile appetite in the old creature, spiking his thirsts beyond what Leina could safely bear.

" _Please_ don't," she said.

The snarl at Leina's pulsing throat reminded her how easily skekMal could rend her throat apart. She forced herself to fall limp against him, stuffing down the instinct to wrestle and lash back against him.

"You do not tell me what to do," snapped the Hunter. "Remember that."

"I'm not _telling_ you, Hunter. I'm _asking_ , that's all."

His hands on her spine tightened a fraction. 

"You don't _ask_ , either. If I want you, I take you. You do not contest it. Or has your station changed without me knowing it?"

Leina opened her mouth to respond, but skekMal shook her like an animal, making her forget whatever supplicant she'd thought to soothe him with.

"Do not make me muzzle you again," the Hunter said, thrusting aggressively against her without even shifting his clothes. "Be a shame to hide that pretty face."

There was something about the cold, almost sexless nature of the assault that ate at Leina's soul, reminding her that whatever interest skekMal for her was an impersonal, coincidental thing. But still the adrenaline of magic slammed in her ear drums, and that kept Leina restrained enough not to invite a beating, nor to cower completely at her slaver's mercy.

"Please let me walk. That's all I want."

With a disgruntled snort the Hunter lifted his weight from her back, but kept a foot planted at the base of her spine, holding her prostrate as he ran a scathing eye over her. 

"Do not think you can keep anything from me. I can tell when you're hoarding some secret. If you have a grievance, air it. Some desire, speak it. Anything you hide I will root out. I will _not_ be fooled twice."

He lifted his foot, allowing Leina to stand. She kept her eyes lowered, her posture shrunken, quashing the smug grin that curled within her. The Hunter glowered at her, his mood black as dirt.

"Be back by the time I'm done."

"Fine."

She felt a strange pull from him, quite unlike and opposite to the blue heat of Gelfling magic. Leina had never sensed such a thing before, and it was gone so quickly that she might have brushed it off as imagination had the world around her not pulsed briefly, before. Perhaps it _wasn't_ magic at all, but the absence or corruption of it, the vestigial residue of the Skeksis' ancient elemental power. Some of the Lords still wielded it, the Scientist perhaps the most well-versed. 

Did _skekMal_ sense her magic, as she'd briefly felt the inversion of his?

From under her lashes Leina studied him, taking in the crenellations of his armour, the tensed shoulders beneath threadbare strings of cloak, the restless clenching of his talons. If there was ever a being absent of mysticism it was this monster.

"Go, then," said skekMal. "Stop loitering."

Bobbing her head quickly Leina turned and walked into the trees, only realising as she'd crunched a mile away from camp that she had _bowed_ to the Hunter, an old muscle memory from _before._

* 

Leina walked for two hours in the cold wood, glad of her eyeglasses now the ground was slippery and unforgiving in the encroaching Winter. There were still some beautiful leaves left from Autumn in the trees, dripping vermilion and amber like jewels about a lady's throat. But most of the damp boughs twisting so impossibly high above Leina were naked, now, naked and lonely. Their small deaths were a comforting thing, somehow; each year the trees lost everything they knew, and then regained it again, blooming green as beetles' backs and more lovely than before.

Leina's warm feelings were dashed, however, when she caught the stench of true death on her return to camp, sudden and sourly familiar.

She found the source almost once, a tangle of blood-caked hair and offal and minute claws.

_The Fizzgigs. The Fizzgigs I-_

It shouldn't have shocked her, after all she'd seen and done, but it _did_ , as it had the first thing she'd been made to kill, so long ago. It shocked her because she hadn't _meant_ to do it, hadn't known what such pressure on the minds of the little animals would do. 

Fear and shame overwhelmed her. Leina backed away from the gruesome scene, her boots skidding in a patch of frost, and backed into the prickling heat of the Hunter. He had crept into the woods to meet her, or had stalked her, perhaps, his glittering eye watching her quiet enjoyment of the woods with covetous dislike. 

"What have you _done_ , woman?"

"They- they went mad. I don't understand it."

"Don't you? How do I know this isn't some trick you are trying to sharpen?"

Leina turned on him, indignant, horrified. 

"I'm not _like_ your kind. I don't _torture_. I don't-"

But she _had_ tortured them, prodded their minds towards lunacy the way skekMal claimed the Scientist tormented his little subjects. What was she _becoming_ out here in this blighted wood?

Despair skittered within Leina like an Arathim from the light and she began to run, her white furs weighing her as she blundered from the dead, from the Hunter, with his smug accusations. skekMal, of course, followed, but slowly, cautiously, as if debating whether to capture Leina or finish her here and now, quashing the rising threat in her like a match flame beneath a boot. At last he caught her, ramming her against a bare tree so roughly that something in the great truck cracked audibly.

"I know _why_ you were wet, lady," said skekMal, his voice a low, tearing growl. "You are thinking of killing me with your power, even if your witch said you will not. Could see it in those dead fucking eyes."

He struck her across the cheekbone, glancing the eyeglasses off into the undergrowth. How he hated to see them wearing them, clearly reminding him of the unusual lengths he had gone for her, the Grottan who'd have him dead.

Leina decided not to lie; she hadn't the energy for it, anymore.

"Yes! Of _course_ I am! You _said_ I could try, you agreed to allow me vengeance. You of _anyone_ should understand! Would you rather I met you defenceless and gave you an easy win? I know you better than that."

She kicked at the Hunter as he wrenched up her skirt, spilled her breasts from her dress like soft lilies, leaving the coat upon her, a thing from _him_. Frustrated grief made her forget the red promise of punishment, and for the time-being it seemed that skekMal had, also, only bowing his head to rip at her yielded flesh, his tongue slicking her nipples until they peaked at the warmth of him. His hands brutalised her with a ragged, passionate intensity, opening the resistant slit of her cunt, palming her scalp, raking her buttocks with stinging lines. 

"I should slaughter you, Leina" the Hunter breathed. "Eat your flesh raw for the power in you. Cut the danger from this wood like cancer from sick quarry."

He boiled with feral desire, staring into Leina's eyes, _through_ them, making an idol of her. She sunk her fingernails into the exposed skin beneath his jaw and screamed, wishing she had access to his jugular. In that moment she would have opened it and filled her belly with the tang of salt and slaughter. Part of her felt the Hunter would even take pleasure in it before he died, the thrill of it, but he would never be truly at her mercy again.

skekMal speared the girl with one throbbing cock and took her in fast, deep thrusts, nailing his rage within her. The familiar agonising fullness of him made Leina's body spring into response, but she cried and warred against him, disgusted that even the smallest part of her accepted a murderer's touch. She saw her mother burning, her mother broken beneath this animal, _both_ mothers and a father she'd never know, and she was wet, she was weak, she was an animal.

"Never lie to me," the Hunter breathed. "I made you what you are. Your magic. My doing. Your life. My property."

He raked his jagged teeth across her face and bit down, shaking her like a Rakkida in his jaws. When he released her Leina felt her peak build suddenly, suddenly, stoked by the intensity of the assault. She came in a rain of steaming wetness, making the Hunter groan in vicious delight and thrust his talons against her to feel her slick his palm.

"You're just _scared_ ," said Leina, softly. "You're just fucking scared that you'll lose _again_."

The look in skekMal's eyes filled her with an unholy terror. He pulled back from her, arcing her body far from his like some terrible instrument, then with his next thrust there was a second bolt of pain, a pain so deep that Leina could only gutter and choke, her mouth awash with bloody bile.

"You push me too far, whore," said the Hunter.

The pain in Leina's abdomen was so great that she couldn't even tell that he'd come, collapsing to the packed frost on the forest floor with a windless moan. Slowly skekMal withdrew his righthand sword from her belly, watching as her blood, pink and red, sopped the white fur. He stared at her with pitiless disdain.

"Let's see how far _destiny_ favours you," said skekMal. "Live, and I will forget this trespass. Die and I will burn your corpse on my fire."

He turned and slunk away into the forest, his tail snapping the air behind him like a whipcord.

On her side Leina pressed an ineffectual hand to her belly wound, her vision black with pain. She wondered what the sword had pierced inside her, and then that childish though was grasped by a numb fear of death, terrifying in that it felt so gently inviting. It felt soft and benign, like a nap on summer's day, a cake with a nail in its core. 

She lay and moaned, fighting for consciousness.

Then a dark shape fell over her, large as the Hunter and yet, somehow, gentler.

"Poor beast. You have fallen foul of my _Other_. Come with me."

An arm slipped under Leina's torso, and she let her eyes fall shut at last.


	29. God Kissing Carrion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leina meets a Mystic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've made you wait for this 😅 I wanted to capture the urRu's inertia as truthfully as possible!

The Hunter's smell was thick in that cloistered dark, the scent of Gelfling and mossy woodland and exerted sweat- but it was not _his_ at all. _This_ Leina knew without opening her eyes- and little use would _they_ be, without her eyeglasses. There was something different about this smell, like spices and cooking and _ta._

The Hunter was not here, nor was this the Hunter's place.

Leina had been lying awake for some time, listening alertly to the sounds about her- a bubbling kettle, the rustle of fabric, the grinding of pestle and mortar, and the low chuntering of the unknown being shifting in the space around her prone form. That voice was unlike the Hunter's, too: slow, deep, gentle.

Another Skeksis, perhaps? Leina trembled to think of it. According to skekMal the Lords still treated the majority of the Gelfling population with relative, if exploitative, grace- _she_ , the Hunter's whore, had been an indulgent exception, being kept far enough from the public eye for any gossip to leave the castle guards.

What face of _these_ two, then, was Leina to see? Simpering falseness seemed unlikely, since the Hunter's stink was all over her, marking her out as his. Perhaps whichever beast had her in his keep would ravage her vulnerable flesh, or had done so already while her sickly sleep endured.

Again Leina drew a breath, trying to pick out a smell of rut on her. To her relief there was none; she hadn't been touched in that way, at least not yet.

Slowly Leina opened her eyes and looked around her, immediately searching some means of escape. The room- for room it seemed to be, some kind of poky hut made of dirt and plants, and sparse but for what might have been pots and pans hanging to one side. There was a hole in one wall serving as a door with a scant curtain hanging across a makeshift board of wood, certainly not enough to hold her prisoner, had she been able to stand and flee through it. Nor could it keep the Hunter _out_ , if he came for her.

 _When_ he came.

Leina gulped. Her last memory was of skekMal looming over her, the tip of his sword piercing her belly, hate darkening his eyes. He truly _had_ left her to the fates, this time, apparently having no care whatever if she died. Leina had been arrogant to think that he would honour Cassra's warning, that skekMal's desired her too much to destroy her. _No_ woman could soften the Skeksis' brutal nature, she should know that, by now, nor jeopardise the pitiless forever of the hunt.

Why _hadn't_ he come for her yet? Was she so well hidden that skekMal hadn't been able to find her, or had he abandoned her, assuming that animals had dragged her copse away? Surely _not_. Leina had seen the Hunter stalk a wily, injured Rakkida for days, once, the chase dragging on until skekMal had found the beast, heaving and wet with bloody foam in some underbrush.

No; he would not leave her be, no matter how unlikely it was that she still lived.

And here Leina was, lying helpless on her back in what smelled like musty straw, utterly exposed.

The voice that Leina had heard before spoke up in the gloom.

"So you live. Your will is strong."

Leina licked her dry lips and released a breathless croak.

"Where _am_ I?"

"I found you in the forest. Brought you to my home. Healed you with what I know, and Drenchen healing charms I was given by an old friend, unnum passed. This will be your sanctuary, for a time."

This should have been soothing, but Leina was rigid with suspicion.

" _Sanctuary_?" she repeated, and gasped as pain ripped through her lower body. Breathing slowly, she tried again.

" _Sanctuary_? How can I feel safe when I don't even know who you _are_?"

"You do. You have known me before, in part."

It took a moment or two for Leina to process his meaning, remembering the little skekMal had said on the matter. A shudder skimmed her back like the first slip of snow.

"You're- the other half of whatever it was skekMal used to be. An... urRu?"

The vast creature shambled close enough for Leina to see him, and she studied with apprehension the long face framed in thick hair, the four thick arms, the tail dragging behind him, his proportions so very different to the Hunter's and yet- _similar_ , so very similar.

"My name is urVa," said the beast. "My brethren call me the Archer, or did- I have not seen them for so long."

_The Archer._

Leina licked her cracked lips again, wishing that she was well enough to sit up and confront the creature.

"You're- are you the same as him?" she asked. "The things you do-"

"The Hunter? No. Not the same. Our skills are matched. But otherwise we are opposites."

This skekMal had suggested, also, and for all his faults Leina had never known the monster to lie. If he was all the worst things a wild creature could be then it followed suit that urVa was good, an ally- and yet Leina distrusted him.

" _Are_ you a friend?"

"I will try to be."

The shambling creature sounded amused, although it was difficult to read the expression on his face in such poor light, if at all.

"If you _are_ a friend," said Leina, with effort. "Then will you help me get away from the Hunter?"

The Archer sighed, and turned to stir something in a pot.

"I will keep you safe until you are well enough to return. You cannot stay here forever."

Disappointment, outrage, loss. The emotions were so familiar by now that Leina let them enter her with the passive acceptance of a tired wife parting her thighs at night.

"Then you're _no_ friend to me," she said. "And this is no sanctuary. I bet you told him where I am, didn't you? That's why he isn't ripping this place apart looking for me."

There was only the clinking of something stirring in a pan, and then urVa said, calmly, "I cannot enter conflict with the Hunter, even if I dislike his ways."

" _Why_?"

"We are One."

Leina wanted to scream, but all that left her was a reedy, lustreless keen.

"That was a long time ago! Not _now_ , not anymore."

With a soft laugh the Archer turned to approach Leina. Fearfully she tried to scramble away, overwhelmed by the great black shape looming over her-

_like the Hunter, like skekSil, skekEkt, taking everything they could_

-but Leina's pain was so great that she could do no more than flail her limbs against the hard floor. A single hot tear slipped from the corner of her left eye, squeezed free by the complete helplessness of her situation.

"Poor little beast," said the Archer. "You are afraid of me. Look up, if you can. I want to show you something."

Blinking the tear away Leina saw that the great creature had parted its robes, revealing its upper chest. It shifted low enough that Leina could trace the strange grooves with the tiny starfish of her hand, reading the surface.

How strange. This was what the _Hunter_ had done when he had stolen her from the woods, only to the ridges of his face.

Leina felt very uncomfortable touching the creature; it felt intimate, filthy, making her palm crawl. But then her fingers found a rough gash in the muscle and gasped, understanding at last what the Archer was trying to infer.

"This scar- the Hunter has the same one. I- it was _me_ who made it. When I ran away."

"I felt it," said urVa, his voice devoid of anger or dislike. "Any injury to _him_ is one to me, as well. And I have given him some knocks, in my time, although not so many as befall him."

Leina withdrew her hand, clenching it into a fist. Then she said, "Under your chin. Let me see. The day you found me- skekMal hurt me, and I-"

"The same," said urVa, and as he lowered his vast head Leina felt the scratches she had made on the Hunter's jaw as he had raped her against one of the great trees in the forest. The Archer allowed the touch with grace, only moving away once Leina had finished.

"So you can't fight each other without both losing," said Leina, thoughtfully. "Or dying."

urVa grunted and turned back to the boiling pot.

"But in that case why can't I _stay_ with you?" Leina asked, with a desperate note. "skekMal _can't_ attack you, can he?"

"You think he will not try? He knows my limits, for they are his, too."

"But he tried to kill me-"

"If he had meant it in earnest then you would not be here," said the Archer, and smiled. "That wound is no more than a love-tap in comparison to what he could have done."

An involuntary gasp eased from Leina's tight lungs.

"How can _you_ say that? That _word_?"

urVa lifted a spoon from the bubbling pot and sipped slowly. He did not answer.

"Do you know... what I am?"

"You are many things. Gelfling. Grottan. Female. And many more."

"I mean to your _Other_."

Another pause filled by clinking pans.

"I have heard skekMal's business, from afar, in the forest. The things that sometimes come before death."

Imagining this creature lifting his heavy skull to listen to faraway grunts and screams in the dark was _more_ than unpleasant; it was a horror.

"And you've _never_ done anything about it?"

The great shoulders shrugged, another mannerism that reminded Leina acutely of the Hunter, the restless motion that jerked through him in moments of irritation. A cold sting of disquiet bit Leina's spine.

"You don't think it's your business, do you?"

Again the urRu didn't respond.

 _Like Cassra, like the Dousan,_ Leina thought. _The Hunter was right; nobody in this world cares what happens to me unless it hurts_ them _, too._

"What if I told you that it wasn't _just_ skekMal who hurts Gelflings? The others-"

"There is little of my kind that I do not know."

The apathy in the Archer's voice made Leina tremble with rage. She opened her mouth to object, but stopped, again questioning if she had any right to anger now that she had helped the Hunter to kill.

 _No. It's different. If I was a God, or a Lord, or whatever the urRu are, I'd be stronger I'd be able to_ do _something. But I'm not even strong enough to die._

_Maybe the urRu aren't, either._

"And the others? _They_ know too? How long have you all sat around doing whatever you do, letting it happen? Haven't any of you ever thought of threatening the Skeksis to make them stop?"

"Violence is not our way. We chose peace when the Skeksis made dominion their conquest. We intervened in their warmongering, once, so long ago. It would take much for us to do it again. Our nature is only to observe."

Tired and disgusted Leina turned her head to the dirt-wall of the hut. Some minutes later she sensed the Archer approaching her again.

"There is soup here. Eating will help you heal."

"I don't want it."

Again the urRu retreated.

"So be it, stubborn Gelfling."

"You won't- _force_ me?" Leina asked, cautiously.

Another little laugh.

"I am not the Hunter."

Something about the simple phrase made Leina relent.

"Alright. Just a bit."

But the resistance to being helped emerged again when it came to the changing of the dirty straw around her, and the dressing of the wound. Again the urRu halted, asking permission despite the fact that he must have done so repeatedly before Leina had awoken. She felt as stiff as a Childling's doll, remembering how the Hunter had once nursed her to health but had _asked_ nothing, caring not for her feelings, but the maintained survival of the little thing he fucked.

Now he had left her to die in the woods it seemed he cared not for that, either. He, the last living beast who seemed to think of Leina at all.

"Do you- have to do this?" asked Leina, her voice breaking. "Can't you just... leave it alone?"

"I could," said the Archer, ponderously. "Then the wound would fester, and you would breathe your life away into Thra. No even magic can stave the reachings of Death forever. Paths, choices. They are not only mine to choose."

"I can't."

"You cannot choose? Or cannot die? Falsehoods, they seem to me, or else unimaginable truths. Perhaps you know more than I."

Leina realised that the urRu was teasing her, but completely without malice, and the feeling was rather strange.

"Just do it," said Leina. "It's just- I don't like being touched."

It sickened Leina that the statement was only half-true. Some desperate, gibbering, depraved part of her _wanted_ this shambling monster to pin her with its thick arms and force itself, slow and savouring upon her, afraid of what this allyship meant without it. _Another_ part shrieked like some inquisitor's victim in fear and hate of this God-thing who had plucked her warm corpse from the snow and kissed it back to life.

"These circumstances are not my will," said urVa. "Nor your Master's. In that thought, again, we are one. This does not happen often."

"Then he shouldn't have left me for dead like some fucking animal."

" _We_ were left for dead, also, he and I," said the Archer, another playful glimmer in his eye. "From a wound by some small blade. I remember the hurt. Perhaps the Hunter sees it as a debt repaid."

"But-"

Pain and emotion cut Leina's protests short. At last she gestured a hand, indicating that the Archer go ahead and do what he must. Leina tried to conjure some small magic, to take herself to a window in some other place so that she needn't see nor feel herself as urVa tended her needs. But she was too tired to create it, and thus had to endure the creature's warm, soft touch, his passive gaze.

She didn't understand it. She was afraid.

Distantly, once or twice, Leina thought that she smelled the faint scent of arousal on the uRru as he lifted her torn dress to bathe and dress her wound, but it was so light that she doubted the creature was even aware of it within him, or perhaps would never admit that it was there. Had urVa _ever_ mated with another creature, or had he abstained, monk-like, from such things?

It occurred to Leina that there were far more contrasts between the Archer and his Other than she had immediately realised. He wore no trophies, possessed very little apart from basic necessities, and when he spoke he was gentle, almost playful, at times. But this only made the beast more alien and remote and, thus, untrustworthy.

The following week was a thing of routine, waking, eating, the changing of bandages, and, as always, sleep. Leina chose not to speak to the urRu for the first few days, and thus he rarely offered his own thoughts. Then, one afternoon, while peeling back the bandages on Leina's stomach he said, abruptly, "You heal fast. An injury like this should not close for over an unnum. In a week or so yours will be near-shut. But then you are not much like other Gelflings."

"You don't know anything about me," said Leina, sullenly.

" _Knowing_ can come from observation. You can learn much by listening to the forest, or reading a trail."

"And what have you read in mine?"

The urRu tilted his head.

"When my Other covets prey it lasts only until their defeat on his blades. He considers _you_ undefeated. What fire still burns in you, little Gelfling, that the Hunter wants?"

Leina had only told her story aloud to others once before, and the awry ending of the event made her tongue slow and cautious. But at length she said, "When I ran from the Hunter he didn't kill me. He should have done. He should have killed me a _dozen_ times. But he decided he- liked me. I don't think even _he_ knew why. Then we met a witch in the Crystal Sea and it made sense."

"How?"

"She read our fortunes. Said that Thra has tied us together. That's why skekMal didn't kill me. Or couldn't. Neither of us can die while I'm with him."

 _With him_. How Leina despised the words.

"Destiny," said urVa. "Such things are written in the stars."

"It's nothing to do with stars," said Leina, dully. "My _Vlilaya_ is quite strong. I could be a shaman, if I was any better at using it. But _he_ hurts me. Tires me out. He can't just- leave me alone, you see. He _takes_ from me. Goads me. He's made me- I'm completely alone, now, because of what he's done. He-"

"You do not need to tell me things that harm you to speak them."

To this Leina nodded reluctant gratitude.

"Something I have learned," said the Archer, as he let Leina's dress fall over her wound again. "After being split from my brethren not once but twice in turn- how to make _peace_ in being alone. Meaning. To wait for something more."

"I've done that too many times. Anyway, _you_ don't have to see your enemy day after day. You'll never understand."

The urRu shook his head.

"Now _you_ don't understand. The Hunter is not my enemy. He is _part_ of me. I cannot hate what I once was."

Another few days passed without further conversation, and with each of them Leina felt her strength returning. She was able to sit, with immense pain, and immediately set to work on some small exercises Hila'an had taught her to build up her scant muscle again. The unlikely nature of Leina's recovery was not lost on her; destiny had made a pet of her as surely as the Hunter had. With that vitality came her old ruthless need to survive, to fight her lot, regardless of the cost.

Despite Leina's budding trust that the uRru's nature was harmless she began to size up her chances against him, comparing him to his formidable Other.

The Archer was slow, but _deliberately_ slow; the snaking of his spine as he walked and the rippling muscle in his arms made Leina suspect that he would respond quickly in an attack. His size would make it impossible for Leina to defeat him in direct combat- she would have to rely on trickery, instead, as she had the Rakkida in the Crystal Sea.

As her mobility returned and her pain lessened Leina catalogued the room of what few possessions might be repurposed as weapons. There wasn't much to see apart from pots, spoons, and ladles, useless to anyone but an idiot, and any knives the Archer kept were not on display. However, as urVa left the hut each day carrying a bow Leina noticed the arrows in his quill, their tips malicious points, and began to covet their sharpness.

It came to pass that one morning an arrow fell, unnoticed, from urVa's quill, and once he departed for the woods Leina secreted it away under her straw bed. To her observations the Archer didn't even notice that it had been displaced. Odd, since he apparently made each quill himself, but the urRu continued his dutiful care of Leina with no sign of distrust.

Leina waited for the day she could stand without assistance, and quietly laid her plans. She sat in her straw, watching urVa cook stew with his back to her. She eyed the snow on his robes from his daily venture outdoors, the way his large tail twitched gently behind him. In one hand Leina clutched a snare that she had woven from fabric torn from the hem of her dress and knotted straw, the other end of which was tied around the leg of the simmering pot, concealed by the gloom. In her right fist she held the arrow, lightly stroking the tip.

Leina had mapped the hut so well that she would not need to see to act. Silently she approached the Archer from behind, her silhouette concealed by the gloom. She knew where on his neck to strike, imagined his blood filling her hands, her mouth, as she drank from a God.

He _deserved_ it, too, this placid beast, for _he_ had been one of those arrogant eldritch things that had made Leina's world its frontier, inserting itself where it wasn't wanted. _He_ was as responsible for the horrors as skekMal; he merely chose not to see it, his inertia a stagnant violence. And when urVa was dead the _Hunter_ would be, too, at long last.

 _This_ was the loophole in the witch's prophecy.

*

A day he would leave the girl in the forest, skekMal had decided, then he would return, dragging her corpse to camp again to eat. He'd doubted very much that she would survive what he had done to her, although the limits of the Witch-Shaman's fortune made him curious enough to test its bounds. The Hunter had never regretted anything in his life- certainly not threading his blade into the Grottan's _sneaking_ guts -but he rued that he might never hilt himself in her pretty cunt again, nor would find a better hunt amongst the Gelfling race.

He forgot her as he plundered the wood of other beasts, losing all thought and reflection in the blood-song of deathly pursuit. Not even the woman's unwilling climaxes on his cocks pleasured the Hunter more than his purpose- still, when a day had passed and he sat alone in his camp he remembered the woman he had abandoned to her death, and grinned.

"Now we will see, dog," he muttered. "Even your damned luck cannot save you from my sword."

He stalked between the trees, his nostrils flaring as he caught Leina's scent in the snow. Drool gathered in his open beak as he considered how her flesh might taste spitted over his flame, how powerful he would become having swallowed another witch so soon.

But as he skulked towards the tree he had fucked the Grottan against skekMal found the snow at its roots empty, only frozen blood where she had been. He roared, driving his blades against the tree trunk so hard that the wood threatened to split. There were _prints_ by that tree, leading away into the forest. Lowering his head to inspect them the Hunter felt a sudden rush of anger, disbelief, and-

 _Fear_. For the first time in a thousand trine, something like fear.

"It has been long since we have spoken, Hunter."

" _You_!" snarled skekMal, turning to face the shape that came shambling through the woods towards him. "This is _my_ territory. You know well not to cross me. Do _not_ make me drive you out again."

"I have no quarrel with you," said the Mystic- the _Archer_ , he called himself, the stupid cunt, _he_ who had killed _nothing_ and _no-one_ at all. "And that is how it will remain, if you see sense, through that cloud of rage. I have taken in your charge, who you left, bleeding."

skekMal unleashed a growl of surprise.

"The woman _lives_?"

"She may yet die. I am able to heal her. Magic comes naturally to the urRu. Besides, Aughra left me many gifts, before she left to travel the skies. Will you allow me to aid her until she is well?"

The Hunter, roiling with hatred and displeasure, stared at the creature that had once been part of him and now revolted him so much in its softness.

"Her life and flesh belongs to me," he snapped. "Return her when she can walk again and I will forget that I saw your kind here. _Touch_ her and you will regret setting a hand on what is mine."

It had been the Hunter's opinion for a long time that the urRu should all be consigned to some jail where they could harm neither themselves nor their counterparts, out of sight and mind. Now he wished that he could slaughter this pathetic animal, and the awareness that urVa knew this would never come to pass drove skekMal half-mad with frustration. 

"It will be done," said the Archer, nodding his head. "I have no desire to keep pets, as you do."

The Hunter watched the urRu retreat, his flanks heaving with loathing. Only when the beast had gone did skekMal's adrenaline dissipate enough to make space for another thought: it was true that the woman would not die by his hand.


	30. Snow White, Rose Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> urVa, the Archer, is hunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so fucking late I'm an asshole 😅🤣 Merry Christmas

The Gelfling was hunting him.

urVa had realised this on the day one of his arrows had gone missing, but had said nothing, curious to see what would happen. It had been forever since the Archer had spent any notable time with a Gelfling, let alone a _Grottan_ , the rarest clan, and having been led to believe Gelflings were of a gentle and harmless breeding urVa was almost delighted to meet an example of the exact opposite.

He didn't question why the girl might want him dead; her anger and wretchedness with the world, with her _Master_ , were reason enough, and he did not hold it against her. But even had she no reason at all the Archer would not have begrudged the Grottan her hunt. If fate saw fit to put him in her path then who was _he_ to question that?

urVa became used to the feeling of being watched, _listened_ to, a tense, instinctual sensation that he knew from the forest, where the eyes of some predator were always measuring him up for the kill. It amused the Archer to realise how well the Hunter's behaviours and teachings had been absorbed by this Gelfling; she was a spiritual offshoot of himself, the perfect woman to his bestial man.

A _mate_ , for want of a better term.

This had always been a foreign concept to the UrSkeks, who being unified had not yearned for company the way they had after their split. _After_ , of course, both urRu and Skeksis had been curious; even the Archer had taken lovers briefly, in the early days, but had become solitary out of preference within a trine or so. It was odd to think that urVa had ever possessed desires of that nature, they being things of passion and need, opposite to the urRu's gentle being. skekMal, as he understood it, had indulged in one tryst after another, and rather than losing interest in it had made it like eating, or passing waste- a thing that was wholly part of him, and could not end.

But that was different from taking a long-term partner, as Gelflings and some beasts did. _This_ , apparently, was what skekMal had chosen to do with the Grottan, another first in a lifetime of experiment and conquest. But as was observed by the Archer not all animals mated for life, and some were brutal lovers; from the state of Gelfling, twitching and mindsick, the Hunter's inexperience and indecision in this regard seemed apt to ruin her even if his deathly hand did not.

This recklessness in skekMal felt _new_ \- the Hunter seemed to be changing the way the other Skeksis were as they aged, not as _quickly_ , no, but still he was losing a mite of his restraint, pushing himself harder than he ought to, indulging in this woman the way the other Skeksis took to food, or narcotics, if the rumours were true. They evolved as the urRu had themselves, the Lords thrashing against destiny as their other halves became slower and embedded in their calm like a stone in a marsh, sinking deeper, deeper, _deeper_.

Perhaps it was the Hunter's old age that had made him sentimental, wanting the warmth of a woman in his bed on the cold nights. The Archer found himself quietly pondering _why_ , then, his Other had abandoned his favoured conquest, a girl as hardy as weathered rock and soft as an Unamoth's wing.

As the Grottan's wound began to seal and her keen observations on urVa became more apparent the Archer noted, too, the mind-sickness hanging about her like a miasma, that she herself had complained of to him. Her simple Gelfling constitution had buckled and warped in the pendulum swing of skekMal's desire, and she was declining even as her physical health strengthened. But like a rabid beast it was making her wily, and despite his reservations the Archer found himself enjoying the novelty of being stalked within his own home.

He smelled adrenaline and nervous sweat on the girl, heard how restlessly she slept at night. urVa wondered if, in her secret heart, she _missed_ skekMal, the certainty of his presence, and deduced after hearing her sob quietly in the dark that she did. The Archer pitied the little creature, had done so since the moment he'd found her bleeding in the snow. He cared for _all_ things in nature, in his way, perhaps not enough for some, but he had love in his heart that skekMal so sorely lacked.

Thus when he sensed the Grottan approaching him from behind one day as he made dinner the Archer did not immediately turn to block her blow. Let her _feel_ that she might have a chance to overpower him, he reasoned, let her _take_ some momentary joy in the thought that she might have a chance to slit his throat.

Death did not frighten urVa; it was just another facet of existence, not something he wanted but not something he fled from, either.

He heard the Grottan's light step on the dirt floor, the click of her tongue unbinding from the roof of her mouth, even the twitching of her ears as she studied him, awaiting her moment. Still the Archer kept stirring the pot, unperturbed, trusting that his reflexes would match even the fastest blow.

He had not reckoned on her tricks.

The Grottan lept onto urVa's back, pulling what felt like a rope taut around his left leg- a snare; _how_ had he not seen it? -causing him to stumble forward into the pot. Hot stew cascaded across the dirt floor, and the Archer felt a sharp point bite his shoulder as the Gelfling scrambled to pierce his throat with the tip. urVa clamped his upper pair of arms around the girl's own, pinning them flat to her sides. She screamed and twisted like an eel, but the Archer held her easily, only grunting with pain as the embedded arrow tore at his muscle.

"A valiant attempt, little woman," said urVa. "But my time has not yet come."

"Let me _go_!" roared the Grottan. "Get your hands _off_ me!"

"If you will give me your vow not to strike me again."

The scream that tore from the woman's throat made urVa close his eyes momentarily in sympathy, feeling the despair behind the cry.

"I need him _dead_! If I kill you, _he'll_ die! Just fucking _let_ me do it!"

"Poor Gelfling; it is not for you to condemn me."

"But you did _nothing_! You've let the Hunter kill and- and-"

Suddenly the Gelfling became limp and quiet, shaking wildly in spasms of shock and emotion. Gently the Archer placed the girl on her bed of straw, where she immediately drew her knees up beneath her chin and rocked, back and forth, back and forth.

urVa carefully removed the arrow from his shoulder and touched the wound lightly. It went surprisingly deep, reminding him of the gash that had appeared when Leina had fled the Hunter. The Archer found that parallel rather interesting. Life was full of them, each mirrored moment drawing attention to something important. He would have to reflect on this lesson and what it meant, what note it played in the song of Thra.

As he dressed the gash in his shoulder the Archer heard the Grottan speak- a pleasant, lyrical voice, she had, although worn hoarse from screaming.

"When _he_ rapes me, that's _you_ , too, every time."

"No," said urVa, patiently. "I would never hurt you."

The Gelfling shook her head. urVa had never seen such a cynical little face in his life, and found it endearing.

" _Your_ people. The UrSkeks. You came to Thra and raped _it_ , too. The Crystal. You raped it and _fed_ off it and you're _still_ doing it. So why should I believe that you- that _you_ -don't feel what the _Hunter_ feels when he does those sick things to me?"

"Pleasure is not shared as often as pain," said the Archer. "Only sometimes. I will not lie that it does occur, but most of skekMal's enjoyment is _his_ alone."

The Gelfling coughed out a sound of disbelief. urVa did not respond to it, only turned away quietly to mop the spilled stew from the floor with an old rag. Only upon hearing a soft rustle of fabric did he glance back to see the woman standing again, letting her dress fall from her into the straw. Her eyes were bleak, soulless, but the Archer saw the way she trembled before him.

"Tell me you don't feel something now," she said. "Tell me you don't _want_ to do what the Hunter does to me."

urVa looked at her body, thin and green and concave where it should have been full, and searched himself, deep within, so that could give the woman the honesty she deserved. His eyes found the small mounds of her breasts, the thick white scars from skekMal's beatings, the red pucker where the tip of a sword had run her through. In spite of this there was _still_ the ghost of something that might have been lust, once, but had he lain her beneath him in the straw he could not have fucked her.

"I am too old for such things," said the Archer, softly. "We urRu are passive, if you remember. To take you would be to take action against you."

The girl suddenly drew an arm across her breasts, flinching in embarrassment, and the Archer shucked the shawl from his back to drape over the woman's exposed form.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"You have nothing to thank me for. I have done the minium. I'm glad that you seem to be better."

urVa carried the stew-sodden rags to the door of the hut and prised it open, gazing for a moment at the thick snow upon the earth and the stars overhead, each telling a different story.

"When the Brothers rise it is time for you to leave."

"Oh."

It was an odd, hollow exclamation, uncertain of itself. Then the Gelfling asked, "Why didn't he come for me?"

The Archer turned, mildly startled to hear tears in the woman's voice.

"I do not know," he said. "I have asked myself this question, and it seems there is more than one answer."

"And what _are_ they?"

urVa looked back at the stars again.

"Did you _want_ him to come, little one? Or is it that you do not want to be the one to return to _him_ and give in to your destiny?"

The Gelfling shuffled uncomfortably in the straw.

"Well, there's that, but I- he's all I have left. He's taken everyone else away. So the Hunter is the only one who... cares. And part of him really does, urVa. I see it in his eyes. Not like he'd feel for his own kind but like- he calls me his _dog_. Do you understand?"

The Archer thought of the possessive rage in the Hunter as he'd confronted him in the woods.

"Yes. I understand."

"So I thought he'd come- for his dog -the way he did _before_ -when he cared for me," said the Grottan, and there was such repulsion and fear in her tone that the Archer came away from the door and set about boiling tea over the fire, something to calm her. "I think he's made me _sick_ , in the head. something is wrong with me."

"It is not that _you_ are wrong. It is that skekMal's life is not for a Gelfling to live."

The Grottan bowed her head.

"I know that. But- but it _hurts_ that he left me to die. How _can_ it hurt? _Why_? I feel worthless, not being able to cope without that _thing_ -"

"You are not worthless. You have your place in the song of Thra."

"With _him_!" cried the Grottan. "With _him_! Why does it have to be with him? He doesn't even want me."

"He does," said the Archer, firmly. "But as to why he he left you- perhaps you should ask skekMal."

He watched a shadow pass across the Gelfling's face like the hand of death.

"He's just a killer. A monster who threw out his favourite toy. I- I am thinking too much into that rotten head."

The following morning the Grottan stood in her torn dress and the white fur, still slightly pink with bloodstains despite having been washed, and followed urVa out of the hut into the forest. It was the first time she'd left the little building since her injury, and she appeared unsure of herself as she crunched calf-deep through the snow.

"If you chose to run away I would not stop you," said the Archer.

The Grottan's nostrils wrinkled.

"And be chased down again? I think I'll pass."

She was quiet for a time, then said, "He's not going to be happy about your- _his_ -shoulder."

"You may say it was some blunder of mine, if you wish. urRu are not beyond mistakes."

"Oh, I know, or you wouldn't have fallen for such an obvious trap. You don't think much of Gelflings, do you? We don't _all_ spend our days thinking of food and festivals."

Laughing, urVa shook his head.

"That is so. But perhaps you are wrong about my kind, also."

"In what way?"

The Archer lifted a low-hanging snowy branch, allowing the Gelfling to pass beneath it.

"There may come a day for my inaction to end."

"I won't count on it."

After a few minutes the smell of smoke drifted through the trees and the Grottan stiffened, sniffing the air.

"He's here," she murmured. "Oh, _Thra_."

She looked as if she wanted to bolt, but stayed rooted to the spot, tiny and frightened in her mass of furs.

"You're afraid," said urVa, simply. "I did not think that there was much else you could endure that you have not already survived."

The Gelfling stared at him for a moment, then sighed.

"You'd better stay away. I- I'm grateful, though. I would have died without you."

"I think you will live long yet. Now go, little struggler. Join your Master."

The Archer watched and listened from a distance as the girl edged through the trees, her wings lashing the air anxiously. They were as tattered as the rest of her; urVa simply had not noticed it before.

From the nearby camp a vast shape stalk, his tread somehow more silent than the Grottan's. The Hunter stood over the tiny figure like a titan, his vast figure heaving with displeasure and, the Archer noticed, a grudging respect.

"So you did not die," skekMal said, bluntly. "You passed my test. Seems you are worthy to live by my side, after all."

"A _test_?" cried the Gelfling. "We both know it wasn't that."

The Hunter seized her delicate chin in one vast hand and gripped it so hard the little woman hissed through her teeth. There was an intimacy to that grip of a kind urVa doubted either of the two were completely aware of, or perhaps viewed quite differently to his keen eye.

"Oh, it _was_ ," said skekMal. "The sand witch's prophecy holds true. You should had bled out, or died of some leak from your gut poisoning your blood. But here you are."

"Here I am. With help."

The Hunter snapped his head irritably to one side.

"Aye. That meddler. See you didn't take well to him."

skekMal shrugged one shoulder irritably, indicating the stab wound beneath the armour. Then he grinned from beneath his mask, his teeth gleaming like points of ice.

"Good girl. It was worth bleeding for you to stick one to that soft cunt."

The Grottan's face was a cold mask, giving nothing away. The Archer found himself more fascinated by this dynamic than ever, the battle of wills, the steel beneath the girl's submission.

"So," said the Hunter. "You've stayed my hound through to the end. You impress me, Leina."

Leina. How the Grottan stiffened in response to her name, her body pulled taut as if with a silver chain. Her ears pressed down so flat against her skull that from the Archer's vantage point she didn't look like a Gelfling at all.

Softly, so softly urVa's ears only just caught the words, Leina said, "But still you left me with your Other. You didn't _force_ me back. That's not like you."

That taloned hand that had been on Leina's chin seized her throat, claws raising red lines on her emerald skin. But even that was gentle, thought the Archer, for he knew that any other would have their windpipe crushed for uttering such backtalk.

"Fucking little fool. I've chased you too long. And he is of _me_. I knew that I would not lose you."

The Hunter released the girl and turned, beckoning her towards the camp with a rough jerk of his mask.

"Come, woman. I want to see how well that belly of yours has healed."

The Grottan only glanced back at urVa once before she followed, and there was something like relief in her expression.

But who knew. The Archer still found Gelfling faces hard to read, after all this time.

*

Thank the Crystal she still smelled of him, not merely the Gelfling undertone the untrained could smell on the Hunter but blood and death and musk. Perhaps it was some kind of scent she gave off in his presence, for she should only have reeked of _ta_ or whatever herbal shit the Archer brewed in his hovel. When the girl had betrayed him again with her secret magic skekMal had been able to shed her like snakeskin, having no interest in being responsible for some uncontrollabe elemental thing.

But stabbing the woman in the gut seemed to have tempered her, and now she had crept back like a beaten pup with snow in her white hair and on her eyelashes the Hunter wanted her badly.

He held off, not wanting her to know his desire, wanting to keep that cowed, nervous look about her. The poor bitch _needed_ him, now, little though she wanted him, and skekMal would reap that vulnerable chink in the hard woman's armour for all it was worth. Oh, he had done well to break her in so, to make himself her world. It would make her take skekMal's hardness without bleating, knowing how fast she'd be cast out in the cold again.

Picking her way carefully through the snow in her shaggy furs and sallow eyes the Grottan looked like some fairytale creature, a woman born from an animal's skin. In such stories one had to steal the pelt of a beast to enslave the girl within, whereas _he_ had put one on, weighing her under the dead weight of his prize.

At last the Hunter could bear it no more. He turned, dashing Leina's body into a snowdrift where she lay, silent, her hand flying to her abdomen. She looked like a green gem in the snow, a gem that skekMal would shatter, again and again.

"Did you think I'd go lightly?" he growled, relishing the terror in her silvery eyes.

The girl turned her head, her white almost as white as the bank.

"No, Hunter."

And still she screamed as he fell on her; and _Thra_ , skekMal was glad to hear that once more.


	31. Havoc

_Worthy_. What did it entail, to be the valued companion to a beast?

Leina mulled over this often in the days following her return to the Hunter's side. skekMal certainly had not commented on the statement since he'd spoken it into being. But then again he rarely thought to dignify anything he said with an explanation, nor did Leina dare extract one from him; his temper was shorter than ever, as of late, worn to scraps by the scarcity of the hunt in winter's grip.

"Soon I will have to make Podlings my sport," growled the Hunter. "Or more of your little kin. It is all the forest yields to me."

"Why not pay a visit to the castle and hunt your own?" asked Leina, coolly. "Wouldn't they make a better match for your skills?"

"Witty," grinned skekMal. "But even if I were _not_ loyal to my brethren they have grown idle. _Unfit_. I'd find better sport hunting a stone than their lot."

"Even your _Emperor_?"

"Careful," said the Hunter, his head snapping towards Leina. "I do not ask you to _like_ my brothers. But I will _not_ hear your disrespect."

"I didn't disrespect him, Hunter" said Leina, swiftly. "I only mean that you've always spoken highly of him. Or higher than the _others_ , anyway."

She elected not to mention her personal feelings, that the Emperor had seemed to her as spoiled and rotten as the rest of the court, his eyes gleaming like beads of grease in his shrivelled carapace. Admitting such a thing wasn't worth the beating she'd receive, but Leina knew from the Hunter's cantankerous grunt that she didn't have to say a word for him to know her thoughts.

"You've _never_ hunted a Skeksis?" asked Leina, steering the subject slightly away from troubled waters.

skekMal, partway through cleaving fat from an animal bone, paused to slough a gobbet of fat into the snow.

"No. I have not."

"Really?"

The Hunter's head switched over his shoulder again, his eyes narrow slits.

"Do you doubt my word, witch?"

"I _believe_ you. I'm just- I'm _surprised_ , that's all."

This was a half-truth; too well now did Leina understand how skekMal's consciousness of his own mortality governed his existence. Still, she was as ever bewildered to find herself up against the fence of the Hunter's tenuous limits, and decided with a quiet recklessness to push at them. After all, if Leina- so small, so fragile, a mere _Gelfling_ -could be hunted to distraction then why not his _brethren_ , who surely had a better chance at survival than she?

"I'm not trying to offend you, Hunter."

"You talk too much."

"It's just- you seem to have gone after every _other_ creature on Thra, so I just wondered-"

"You would _love_ to see me chase my own kind," sneered the Hunter. "Just as you made your Fizzgigs slaughter each other. If your spells could open my head you would steer me as your mercenary.

His voice sounded almost fond, and Leina recoiled from it. The selfishness of skekMal's indulgence in her never failed to end in some violent episode, and she wasn't sure how much more she could stand after having so freshly healed from the last incident.

"What _I_ want has never mattered," said Leina. "Like you said, I'm only _talking_.".

"Hmm."

The Hunter continued picking at his bone, each jerk of his vast right arm making Leina flinch.

"The Ornamentalist and the Chamberlain owe me a run," skekMal said, suddenly. "But it would be short. They would not get far before I dashed their heads on the castle walls."

Glancing up nervously Leina realised that she had reignited a genuine hunger for revenge in him, and with it an untapped sense of challenge.

"I thought I wasn't _worth_ the trouble of fighting your brothers," she said. "That's why you never went back for them."

She stared at the Hunters back, waiting to see how serious he was in his grumbling threats. He'd talked much on the topic since claiming her from the desert, after all, and _still_ had not returned to the castle; his loyalties to the Skeksis were apparently the mitest bit stronger than his desire for revenge and conquest.

"I defend what is mine," said skekMal, gruffly. "I should have done it unnum ago."

"But you didn't care so much what happened to me then," said Leina, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice. "You thought I'd splinter, like an arrow. But instead I stuck."

"Aye. Like a thorn in my side."

The Hunter stood, his spine cracking as he shook himself and cast the stripped animal bone to the ground. He weighed his weapons in his hands, turning the blades in the sunlight. Sniffing the air Leina smelled the sharp scent of adrenaline on him and felt a thrill of dread.

"You're not going back to the castle _now_?"

"Why shouldn't I? Afraid I'll make _you_ more enemies?

"I don't want to go," said Leina, shivering even within the _enveloping_ thickness of her furs. "I can't. I _can't_. Please don't make me."

skekMal struck at her with a backhand, making her head sing with sudden white light. Leina tottered backwards, her balance threatening to sprawl her in the snow, but then the Hunter had her by the collar of her dress, twitching her upright again. The sensation of the Skeksis' animal heat and rage burning through Leina's clothes made her gasp.

"You have no right to ask anything of me, killer," said the Hunter.

Leina seized the front of skekMal's robes, fastening her fingers tight upon them. She knew he liked her to touch him, to make desperate gestures that soothed his ego. Through the fabric she almost thought that she could feel his powerful heartbeat, but perhaps it was only her own pulse, quick and frightening.

"You _said_ I was worthy of being at your side, skekMal," said Leina. "Tell me what that means if it changes nothing between us."

"Means that I have pride in keeping you," snapped the Hunter. "You are _still_ my slave. I govern all you do. I treat you as I like. Yes, you have your value, but that ends when your mouth opens on things you have no place to speak on."

skekMal released Leina, letting her thump down into the snow like a stone.

"I will go to the castle and pay my pathetic brothers their due. You've reminded me that they do not fear me as they should. I will teach them to cower like Podlings at the sight of me. You _will_ stay here. Step foot out of this camp and I will beat you bloody."

Crouching beneath him Leina tried to scramble her thoughts together, thrown by the multiple directions the conversation had turned in so short a time.

"You... you're trusting me _alone_ here?"

The Hunter grinned, and there was something so fearsome and cruel in his expression that Leina questioned if some germ of madness had somehow seated itself into his mind.

"You returned after I left you for dead, Leina. I need no chains to keep you here; that shaman's fortune has you shackled to me. Not that you have anywhere to _go_ I would not trace you to, lost little witch."

With a growl skekMal tore away into the trees, his bulk moving with an unnatural litheness between their branches. Leina ran her hands through her hair distractedly, at a loss as of what to do with herself. The Hunter's absence, as abrupt and impulsive as it was, boded unpleasant tidings; his ego had swelled in the confirmation of her ties to him and, thus, his own deathlessness with her as his token.

What would prevent him from wreaking more havoc upon this world? The single strand holding skekMal from decimating the Gelfling race seemed to be the Emperor's word, and that strand was as thin as a Vapra's eyelash. What if Leina's vision of the captured All-Maudra came to pass, if the Skeksis rule dissolved into war? Would the Hunter abandon his singular existence to take arms with his brothers?

Leina did not need to conjure magic to find an answer to that. But there was nothing she could do about it, nor was it her _place_ to, she who had helped kill her own. For the first time it occurred to her that perhaps that very moment moment in time would be the one where the tie between herself and the Hunter was severed; there was nothing else that made sense, no other reason he would not himself destroy her.

Leina found herself unconsciously running a hand over the brand on her back, the one that skekMal had burned into her skin with an iron pike. If the world was to change so quickly, putrefying like a corpse in the Sog, Leina had to find her purpose within it, _without_ the Hunter. If she did not she'd either find herself slaughtered in whatever battles the Skeksis waged upon the Gelfling or stranded, purposeless, in the wilds of Thra, a lost whisper in the dirge of Thra's waning song.

She had to call on her _Vlilaya_ again. She had to learn what lay ahead in the bleak planes of the future, no matter how much it strained her to see.

Thus even as the Hunter devoured miles in his pursuit of revenge Leina remained in one place, eyes closed, a frail figure in white fur and a wringing sweat, focusing inwards on an elusive thread of time.

It was hour later that Leina at last heard the pitch of the blue flame, and reached out mentally for its searing fire.

*

It had been a relatively quiet day in the castle, which, to skekEkt, meant a dreadfully boring one. She sat in her chamber pinning velvet to a mannequin, bemoaning the lack of drama to stir the dust-ridden hush of the quiet halls. Perhaps she should creep into the rooms of one of the other Lords, whisper a seed of gossip into the ears of any willing to listen. It was about time; the court was positively stagnant without her influence at work.

Putting a last pin into the draped garment with a genteel flourish skekEkt turned to her chamber door and opened it, shuddering delicately as a cold winter chill rolled in from the stone hallway beyond. As she stepped into it the Ornamentalist became immediately aware of a high pitched shrieking from somewhere in the belly of the castle, and perked up considerably, wondering if someone had perhaps stood barefoot on a crawlie, or better still engaged in some petty quarrel with the others.

Picking up her skirts she rushed down the corridor, smirking to think that one of her brethren was in some distress; harmony was not conductive to entertainment, after all. It was only when skekEkt discerned the words embedded in those screams that she stopped in her tracks, her feathers springing upright with terror.

" _skekMal_! Hunter _must_ desist, Chamberlain knows nothing of these claims, I am innocent, blameless, would never betray-"

"Lies!"

There was a bestial roar, and a terrible crashing sound as of something being thrown across a room. The Ornamentalist would have known that voice immediately even had skekSil not named it. She receded back the way that she had come, panic setting every feather on her wrinkled flesh upright.

"You defiled my slave," skekMal bellowed, from whatever room he had taken to assaulting the Chamberlain in. " _That_ I might have let pass, without your attempt on my life."

"skekSil is loyal friend!" screeched the Chamberlain. "Would never harm Hunter, must believe, if Grottan has blamed me then she lies like bitter servant-"

"She cut me with your fucking blade, dolt! Your rotten stink was all over it! Skeksis metal! Here, Chamberlain, why don't you take it back?"

Another howl of terror erupted and skekEkt fluttered her hands to her beak, made quite weak by the thought of skekMal's savagery. She knew all to well how little the Chamberlain had expected the Grottan slave girl to try to Hunter's life, not seriously, at least; he had merely meant her to be _caught_ with the knife on her person, beaten severely or even killed for her misdeed. It had been a game, just as it always was for skekSil to stir the pot and sabotage the fortunes of others.

It had been so for skekEkt when _she_ , too, had agreed to help the foolish girl. If the Hunter was here, incensed, so many months after the knife and the clothes had been delivered then the Grottan had given skekMal all manners of grief, enough for him to believe _her_ word over that of his brothers.

"That horrid little nuisance," skekEkt murmured to herself. "How has she lasted so long?"

"Come here, skekSil," said the Hunter, his voice rather closer now than before. "You sought to amuse yourself by arming my servant. Let me show you what _fun_ she had with me. And when I'm finished-"

Another high-pitched screech emerged, sending skekEkt running wildly down the hallway, her many jewels swinging by their chains.

"-I'll find that sneaking cunt Ornamentalist and cut off her hands for sticking her talons in my woman."

Yelping pitifully skekEkt turned a corner, nearly breaking her neck as she stumbled over a pair of Podling servants.

"Quick," she snapped, panting delicately. "Where is the Emperor? There is an emergency that requires his assistance."

" _Kupatilo_ ," said one of the Podlings, cringing away from her. "Bath house, my Lord."

The Ornamentalist tore into said room with far less than her usual grace, her lashes fluttering agitatedly. To her relief the Emperor was clambering out of one of the baths into his robes, but still she averted her eyes behind a politely shielding hand.

"My Lord Emperor!" she cried. "The Hunter has broken into the castle unannounced! He is assaulting the Chamberlain as we speak! Please, control him, he will listen to no-one else, he never has! He is _insane_!"

"skekMal? Why would he come here?"

The Emperor's voice was exhausted and irate, the temper of a king torn away from life's pleasures. Only when he turned and saw skekEkt's expression did he straighten up, becoming suddenly grim and severe.

"The Hunter despises court; he only shows his face to extract some favour or to settle some disagreement. What has the Chamberlain done to ignite his temper?"

"Barely a thing, nothing, it was only the Grottan girl, she-"

"That slave," skekSo breathed. "If she is not already dead then I swear I will put an end to her. I am long tired of the dramatics her existence causes in this empire. How can one small green gnat be the source of such unrest?"

skekEkt hid behind the Emperor as he strode through the castle, knowing too well that the Hunter would not dare attack her if she had his protection. They came upon skekMal almost immediately, turning a corner to his alarming figure ramming the Chamberlain up against a wall by his throat. Blood shook from the yelping victim from slashes in his clothes, and the Ornamentalist spied the delicate handle of a blade sticking out of one of the padded layers, only their immense thickness preventing it from causing more harm.

"Hunter," said the Emperor. "You must cease this lunacy. I cannot have you slaughtering your brethren within the castle walls."

"Then I'll drag them beyond it and rip their gullets out before the guards," snarled the Hunter. "They know better than to put their claws on what is _mine_. Still they toyed with my slave. Gave it means to _escape_ me. I will _not_ be humiliated by these brainless fools."

"I well understand your rage," said skekSo, calmly. "And sympathise. What is yours is yours, and your brothers will be punished for their indiscretion. But you must not take their lives on accounts of a Gelfling whore."

"She is not _just_ a whore," said the Hunter, but he let go of skekSil with a snarl.

Whimpering, the Chamberlain retreated, bemoaning his ruined clothes.

" _What_ is your meaning, Hunter?" asked skekEkt, emboldened by skekMal's relenting violence. "You _surely_ cannot be loyal to that stunted little mutant."

"Where were your complaints when you fucked her?" snapped skekMal, turning on the Ornamentalist with murder in his eyes. "I swear that I will rip you in two for your trespass."

He clenched his jaw and looked at the Emperor, exuding such unbridled bloodthirst that all present were taken aback.

"I'll dispose of the woman when she is no good to me. But she is versed in magic. I have use for her. She does not break like others of her kind. I have need of that in the wilds."

"It's _still_ _alive_?" cried the Ornamentalist. "Why didn't you kill it when it _attacked_ you?"

The Hunter leered, the grimace of his vicious teeth an appalling sight.

"Believe me, she has suffered for it. And _will_ die. But not for some time."

The Ornamentalist was struck by a sense of great curiousity; it was unlike skekMal to grant any kind of mercy, and the only reason she could imagine him sparing prey was because it remained undefeated. What could _possibly_ be left in that tainted, hopeless creature that the Hunter had not ground into nothingness? What Gelfling magic was enough to sway him?

"I trust that there is some way of settling this debt without slaughter," said the Emperor, coolly. "If I am at liberty to provide it, Hunter, then I shall give you whatever you ask of me. I merely implore that you do not arrive at the castle without being summoned again. This upheaval is not appropriate for court."

skekMal stepped towards the Emperor, and skekEkt found herself impressed that skekSo did not wince in fear of him.

"I'll accept," said the Hunter. "But only so that I do not stain my sword with their cowards' stinking blood."

The Ornamentalist put a hand to her breast and sighed in relief. Thra had thought to spare her, and still give her the joys of watching such entertainment unfold; she could not have imagined a more invigorating afternoon in her wildest fantasies.


	32. Amulet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skekSil observes the Hunter's negotiations with the Emperor. Leina contemplates a vision

The Chamberlain limped grudgingly into the throne room after the other Skeksis, the tiny knife that he'd given to the blind Gelfling so many unnum ago still sticking out of his chest like a jagged brooch. It was thanks to his own preening vanity that that he'd survived the Hunter's fit of rage, the Chamberlain having layered himself in so many jewels that the blade hadn't wedged quite as far as his attacker had likely wanted it to.

However, skekSil didn't dare remove it himself, nor did he wish to miss any of the proceedings by heading down to the laboratory for medical care. Instead he only stood, fluttering his hand dramatically over the gilded handle of the knife as the Emperor began to cut a deal with his mad pet. The pain was worth witnessing this, a rare glimpse into the Hunter's world and desires.

It amazed the Chamberlain that Leina had _dared_ use the blade, let alone land a   
significant blow. The Hunter almost never let his guard down enough to be attacked- what _tricks_ had this Grottan learned to slip by the formidable Skeksis' defences? If her magic was _truly_ so strong then was her existence not cause for concern, a threat to the Lords? 

_skekMal_ certainly did not seem to think so, or perhaps he simply did not care. In his usual coarse, rough terms the Hunter demanded that the Grottan girl continue to be left alone by his brethren, _untouched_ , without exception, that if any rumour of her reached the court it was to be dispelled, warped, or ignored. Yet skekMal wished to know of such rumours himself, to have spies placed in various regions around Thra that might inform him of the woman's movements and activities.

"You have given her free will to roam the forests unchecked, I take it?" asked the Emperor, curiously. "How droll. Your habits are as intriguing as ever, skekMal."

"And _yours_ as stagnant," skekMal returned. "One day you will tire of this mouldering rock and hunt with me again."

"Hunt _what_? Gelfling, I assume?"

The Emperor's eyes were tired, but amused. skekSil studied them carefully, seeking ulterior motives, weaknesses, a foothold for his own advancement. It was rather disappointing that skekSo kept his thoughts so well-guarded.

"You dismiss me," growled the Hunter. "But mark my words. Skeksis were _not_ born to sit idle. Remember our conquests."

"I do," said skekSo. "And fondly. But to what end would we destroy our alliance with the Gelflings when it serves us so well?"

"Some petty squabble, no doubt. Nothing else stirs you from your seats."

skekMal sneered, casting a dark look around the room. The Chamberlain shrank back somewhat as the beast looked upon him, half-convinced that the beast would renew his attack a second time.

"And you, Hunter?" asked the Emperor, archly, leaning back in his great throne. "Your ways are fickle, as of late. It's odd enough that you've granted this wayward servant _mercy_ , but now you entertain yourself by requesting that _we_ spare servants to mind her like some infant. What nonsensical game do you play?"

" _Nonsense_ , you call it," said the Hunter, rounding on the Emperor as if he might take his own king into savage battle. "Now I know that you have lost your edge, my Emperor."

skekSo bridled visibly, and Chamberlain noticed the whole court shiver in delicious anticipation of conflict unlike any they had seen in trine.

"Tell me _what_ this Grottan is for if _not_ indulgence," snapped the Emperor. "You say she has magic- when have you ever cared for that, skekMal?"

"Perhaps _you_ should start," the Hunter retorted. "She gives me strength, fortune, good health. We all draw from the Crystal; I draw from her. I am stronger than I have been in a ninet, and you- not _one_ of you can match me."

"He never spoke of this magic when he spilled the Grottan's blood in my bedchamber," muttered skekEkt, fanning herself archly. "She was just an ordinary servant, nothing special, except- well, _certain_ _matters_ -"

skekMal lurched towards his brothers, roaring, and each of them cowered except the Emperor, who only closed his eyes in irritation. It was only when the Hunter seized skekEkt by the throat that skekSo pounded his staff on the floor, banging with such force that even the Hunter stilled. With an irate grunt he released the Ornamentalist to the floor where she slumped like a lady taken by a fit of vapours.

"Enough," said skekSo. "Enough. skekMal, I will not question you further. Your hunts are not our concern. Have your sport with the woman if that is what you want. I will have some additional guards planted to observe her. _Not_ Gelflings; I will not risk our innocent subjects learning of your transgressions."

"Podlings, perhaps?" mused the Scroll Keeper, ever poised with wisdom. " _They_ are too unintelligent to comprehend what they witness. Not that I _condone_ our brother's senseless violence, far from it."

"Nor I," said skekAyuk, hurriedly, who until this point had not spoken at all.

skekSil, who had been entertained by the Emperor's concession to his wildest subject, noticed a look pass between skekOk and the Gourmand, quick and surreptitious. So it was not _only_ skekEkt and the Chamberlain who had meddled in the Hunter's business somehow, it seemed. What guilty knowledge did they bear?

"How pathetically you fear losing the loyalty of those we could make cower," sneered the Hunter. "Want to know _why_ the witch roams free?"

He skulked about the throne room, his vast, dangerous presence like on omnipresent smoke.

"Because I have broken her a dozen times, and _still_ she crawls back. I do not have to make _my_ slaves simper and crawl on false pretenses. They _submit_. They _fear_. Even the girl, with all her power."

" _What_ power?" asked skekSil, rather breathless with the knife still in his chest. "If so _strong_ why does Hunter keep magic all to himself?"

skekMal lowered from across the chamber, and even at such a distance the Chamberlain retreated against a wall, imagining the Hunter's sword cleaving his throat like a root vegetable.

"It was me who found her," said skekMal. "Want a talisman? Hunt your own. Enjoy the taste of their lives."

He glanced back at skekSo, baring his teeth for a moment before, at last, bowing his head in some scant residue of respect. Then in a vicious sweep of cloak and clenched muscle the Hunter was gone, leaving the castle in such roaring ferocity that skekSil did dare not move lest the Hunter turn back to savage them all in his rage.

*

Leina was barely aware of the Hunter when he finally arrived back at their camp, being too exhausted and wrought with emotion to even lift her head and acknowledge him. She had, with great strain and suffering, caught some fragments of the future- or _a_ future, if the witch-shaman's thoughts on fate and causality were correct. The images themselves had come clear and bright, but their relation to one another, what they _meant_ , were rather merkier indeed.

"Get up," snarled the Hunter, looming over Leina as she roused herself from the tent. "You'd better not be ailing again, dog."

"I'll be alright," said Leina, slowly sitting upright.

Despite the cold her cheeks burned, and her underarms were soaked with the bitterness of sweat. She looked at the smeared shade of the Hunter's figure gliding past her, as ever awed that she had endured the monster for so long, and was perhaps the _only_ creature that ever would.

"You have been in your dreams," said skekMal.

He didn't ask what she had seen- Leina supposed that skekMal was too proud to ever admit curiosity -but he looked at her with a narrow-eyed wariness that felt rather like a question.

"I wanted to see the future," said Leina, carefully. "But I'm not really sure what I saw."

Even _had_ the glimpse made sense she would have guarded it closely; there was no need to give the Hunter more ego, nor tools to torment her with. Besides, allowing him to know how well she was beginning to hear _other_ aspects of the Blue Flame than ones she'd already displayed would not work in her favour.

"Do not keep secrets from me," said skekMal, running a taloned hand across Leina's middle almost gently. "You recall how well _that_ ended last time."

Withdrawing from him slightly Leina muttered, "It's _not_ a secret. I just don't know how to explain it. That's not my fault."

"Hmm. You are rarely lost for words."

As the Hunter passed her Leina smelled blood on his cloak- _Skeksis_ blood, and not his own. Breathing it in Leina didn't know whether to succumb to violent glee or anxiety, wondering what had transpired in the castle. But _she_ , too, was rather too proud to ask for anything, although Leina knew that skekMal's arrogance would not be able to resist spilling the tale.

Sure enough, after the Hunter had stoked the campfire he stretched out each of his terrible limbs and stared down the length of his bone mask, his eyes wicked and vicious with self-indulgent thought.

"My score is _settled_ , witch," he said. "My brethren will not provoke me again."

Leina, sitting, as usual, as far from the fire as she could get without freezing, barely turned her head in the Hunter's direction.

"Good. I'm glad."

"Glad. Not much, from one who suffered so much. You were wretched, were you not?"

Because of you, before them, Leina thought, but aloud she said, "You _know_ that I was."

"Then where are my thanks?"

It surprised Leina to realise that he was only _taunting_ her, his voice dripping with humour. He had caught onto her game, it would seem.

"You want me to ask what you did," said Leina. "Very well, my Lord. What _was_ your revenge?"

She couldn't _believe_ that she'd dared take such a tone with skekMal, as laden with irony as his own teasing. But as he leaned forward, his eyes dancing with the light of a war hero about to begin some epic tale, Leina was reminded of how much they had once talked around the fire, and how much pleasure the gruff beast had taken in it.

It was becoming clearer by the day that skekMal had accepted her _long_ before she had acquired her magic. Leina wondered whether he knew it himself, or if he denied it, still.

"The knife you put in me," said the Hunter. "Found its way into the Chamberlain. He will bear its mark."

His tail thrashed at the snow, arcing a white ribbon of soft powder in Leina's direction.

"I took skekEkt's useless throat in my talons and squeezed her of breath. Would have done more, if the Emperor had not hidden my brothers in his skirts."

Leina turned her face away, not wanting the Hunter to see her disappointment. But skekMal knew her so well that he barked out cruel laughter, and took to his feet to approach her in a dangerous prowl.

"What would _you_ have had me do, sorceress? Tear their throats with my sword? Bring back their organs as your trophy?"

"I won't speak ill of your brethren," said Leina, trying not to flinch away as the Skeksis drew towards her.

"Clever. But I want your honesty."

The Hunter seized the front of Leina's furs and wrested them from her shoulders, bearing the vulnerable expanse of her delicate shoulders. A stray talon scored a line of blood upon her shoulder blade, and something about the scent of incensed them both, he with lust, _she_ with anger.

" _I_ wish you'd killed them as you killed those I loved," said Leina, wrapping her thin arms around her quaking shoulders. "Isn't that what you want me to tell you?"

She watched skekMal's tongue lap blood from his claws and grin, expression a rictus of aroused delight.

" _More_ ," he growled.

Backing away, Leina became afraid of what she had awakened in the Skeksis, and in _herself_. Again she was robbed of the words to tell the Hunter what she really craved, how her heart would have sung to see him spill the blood of Lords across the snow, their screams like the sweetest, ethereal music.

Gelflings weren't _meant_ to think such things, not even those with mindsickness. Leina had surely gone mad, _quite_ mad with grief if, for once, _she_ yearned for more violence than the Hunter did.

He came at her again, peeling her dress from her as if stripping bark from some pale tree. There was a malignant, coarse affection in how he touched her, his vast hands cupping her head, her breasts, her waist without their usual bruising clinch. His tongue lapped the perspiration from her skin in rough strokes, and when an involuntary moan escaped Leina skekMal leered, his thumb caressing her cheek.

"Burn for me, woman," said the beast. "I'll bask in your heat."

The Hunter opened his robes and pulled Leina up onto his groin, where she fought, as ever, not wanting the unwanted crisis that it was so clearly his intent to give. The stink of male hormones and adrenaline boiling off the Hunter's gnarled skin made Leina wince, yet her opening was soaked when he entered her, and she didn't know why.

Revolted, she looked down at some point past the Hunter's colossal arm, hoping to conceal her shame.

The cold should have numbed their desires, hers and his, but the snow slipping Leina's back barely felt cold with the heat of magic still upon her, and _nothing_ could ever dampen skekMal's need after a hunt.

For once he didn't speak as he took her, only grunted aggressively as the head of one of his cocks struck Leina's sensitive core, causing white threads of pleasure to weave themselves into her every nerve. One of the Hunter's hands kneaded at her scalp, another her buttocks, the third and forth at her hips, arcing her body at such an angle that his every movement made her whimper with need.

It was the _power_ , Leina thought, the _power_ she had over this monster's whims that allowed her to take something fiercely pleasurable back from him. So often skekMal had visited the despised castle on her behalf, and there _were_ occasionally times amidst the abuse that he had extended the thoughtless generosity of an animal rearing a cub: a heavier fur upon her on an especially cold night, the best portion of meat from his most recent kill. 

These things, although mostly selfish, favoured her at least a little.

 _What did I see in my vision?_ Leina thought, trying to distract herself as the Hunter's sharp thrusts stimulated the bud of her clitoris into a throbbing red point of heat. _Did I witness_ _skekMal allowing me to leave, of his own will?_

She wasn't sure, _couldn't_ believe the possibility of such a thing. When she had drawn on her flame Leina had _seen, felt,_ _heard_ herself standing alone on a lush green hillock, armour-clad and clutching two swords in shaking fists. She'd felt the Hunter's heavy tread, the jangle of her own pulse in her eardrums. She'd tasted the salt of tears and blood. Stood against a corona of red and black sky skekMal had raised his own blades, his jaws ajar in some warcry- then Leina had heard herself speak, the words indistinct, and the Hunter _had relented._

Something had felt _different_ about that slither of future than the _other_ times skekMal had granted Leina her life.

There had been more images- a throbbing, violet light, sourly evil and tasting of rot, a squat old woman and an uRru conversing beneath a tree, a shape spiralling darkly down a cliffside -but they weren't so easy to digest, feeling less relevant than the first. Emerging from the vision Leina had been dismayed that it hadn't given her some life-changing answer, but _now_ -

Perhaps what it _had_ been was a beacon of hope, of mercy.

A message that her tormentor might release her, one day, of his own accord.

skekMal seized a handful of Leina's hair and twisted her head back, his gaze devouring her face with unconcealed avarice. _Still_ he did not speak, rendered silent by his greed for her. He maneuvered her tiny body upon him with the same pitiless stroke until she came upon him, and he within her, their bodies quivering, tense, rigid in one another's grasp.

Only as Leina began to shiver in the cold did the Hunter release her upon the ground, watching as she bent to pick her clothes out of the snow with numb, clumsy-fingered hands. 

It was difficult to imagine a day where he would lose that fascination with her, that he would ever tire of her enough to let her go.

But Leina had seen it, and she believed that she had seen _true._

*

Yet weeks passed, and Leina could still make no sense of what she had gleaned of the future. She tried to keen her ears to the blue flame many times afterwards, hoping to revisit each individual image and perhaps understand them at last, but such sights eluded her. Leina took this to mean that Thra did not _want_ her to know any more, and that prying would only exhaust her.

The dark, cold days did not help much. More and more the Hunter was returning from scouting the forest in frustration that so little decent game revealed itself to him. What beasts weren't hibernating through the long months were slack-mouthed and slow from the effects of the Scientist's mysterious experiments, and although the Hunter still brought in more kills than either of them could eat his aggravation put Leina on edge.

"Tomorrow I will harvest from the Sami Thicket," skekMal said, suddenly. " _You'll_ stay here. I do not want you slowing me down."

 _This_ was a further blow Leina did not need; the guilt of playing mate to a Gelfling-killer was never far from her thoughts.

"Keep... _it_ away from me, then," said Leina, quietly. "When you bring it here, I don't want to see. Please."

Smirking, the Hunter said, "That weak stomach will plague you. See how well you'll live on grass when Spring breaks and you take your leave of me."

Leina scraped together enough energy to lift her chin in some weak gesture of defiance. 

"I never said I wouldn't hunt. Just- just not my _own_."


End file.
